Last week I read in the newspaper Ideal de Granada a story that reached my heart. The protagonist of the news is called Miguel Ángel Delgado, pediatrician and musician, two very remote professions that he manages to combine, and even complement one with the other.
So I decided to contact him and learn more about his life, why he chose a medical specialty so poorly valued among his colleagues and what brings the universal language of music to his little patients.
It ensures that it "opened in channel" in this interview and it must have been so because we have been moved by his words, especially when he has told us about his long income from spinal cord aplasia as a child, or about the life lesson of that newly operated child of a brain tumor during his practices .
Why did you want to study medicine and specialize in pediatrics?
Honestly, I will never be sure why. I am the first doctor in my family and as a child I wanted to be a veterinarian.
I think that my illness, during childhood, had a lot to do with the decision to be a doctor.
I do remember how I decided to do pediatrics. While already in the race, I liked general medicine, with which I had three options: family, intern or pediatrics.
Family medicine became very precarious, so I rotated internally in fifth-year hospital practices. I was saddened by the hospital environment of chronic people, very old people, the occasional dehumanization I saw in the plants ...
In Babies and more Pediatricians are missing in primary care consultations in our country, and it is very worryingMy last option was pediatrics and I practiced in this specialty after internal medicine. He touched me on childhood oncology. I remember perfectly that there was a child in the playroom painting clowns, with a bandaged head after intervening with a brain tumor.
That cancer-operated child gave me a lesson in energy, vitality and hope, in difficult times for me. A year before I had thought about leaving the race and after those practices I found a part of my path.As a child you say that you spent a lot of time admitted to hospitals. How did you live it?
When I was eight years old, I was diagnosed with spinal aplasia, a very rare disease that is little known. In addition, Spanish medicine was not as developed as now and, as they could not treat me in Granada, I spent long periods in Badalona, with almost experimental treatments, improvising, 'on the razor's edge'.
I remember that time of my hospital admissions as very hard, very scary. I can not forget the pain (there was no treatment of childhood pain like now), but also that I was very hopeful.
I remember being very strong and fighting with nails and teeth against the disease. I remember my parents, who were by my side transmitting that force to me.I think that much of my strength came from his, from that leadership so hard that sometimes we don't recognize. I remember them as a firm hand. I could have died hopefully with them by my side.
What did you miss when you were the patient in pediatrics? What would you like to improve?
Many things. I missed a funnier hospital, with more access to the studio. I never repeated a course, because I was stubborn and for long periods I studied only with my books. I did my homework and my mother sent them to school.
He was a good student. I felt that my strong part was my brain and not my sick body. I missed a bed for my mother (as I tell in my song Cuckoo), richer food, free TV (paid and prohibitive).
An income for me was an ordeal. I think it will always be that way for children, but we can try to improve it. Fortunately, most of these things that I mention today have improved and been corrected. We have a very threatened but great public health.
Why do you think there are no pediatricians in primary care? What can we do to remedy this situation?
Miguel Ángel Delgado in his rotation of Pediatrics in Granada I think it is multifactorial. On the one hand, doctors are fascinated by the hospital and the medicine that is practiced there. There is more time to dedicate to a patient, with which the level of care can be better.
In a health center you can have sixty patients in a seven-hour shift. It is stressful and demoralizing at times.
On the other hand, I think that people and society in general consider the hospital specialist as the elite, so it is not uncommon for people to want to work in hospitals, without even having gone through primary care.
In Babies and more One of every four children is attended by a family doctor, why are pediatricians missing in Spain?For me, however, the elite in medicine is any position, if one works with professionalism. Unfortunately, health care is a pyramid, at the base it is threatened, because a good base improves the outcome of hospital doctors, of follow-up. It even directly prevents the disease or makes an early diagnosis that saves a life.
That good foundation, with proper care, will prevent a child from stepping on a hospital probably throughout his childhood and adolescence.
I am not a mere prescriber nor a visualized mucus and diarrhea. I have studied a lot and I have taken full advantage of my training. I derive very little and I am that global doctor that I wanted to be.In addition, the closeness and humanity that develops in primary school is priceless. I feel my patients like a huge family. I'm going to sweep home: those in the hospital don't know it sometimes but the elite work is in primary school.
They also affect long shifts, especially in a profession where most professionals are women. The situation is very improvable. We have a lot to move forward in family and work conciliation and of course a shift from 2pm to 9pm does not help.
Your long hair and the guitar is not the image that some parents have of a children's doctor. Have you had problems in this regard? (As a mother I love it)
Miguel Ángel Delgado, musician and pediatrician, pediatrician and musician Not at all. Sometimes I see the face as a surprise of the parents to see me for the first time, but nothing more.
A health center in the end is like an inner courtyard of a building, so in a few days moms talk to each other and the image does not prevail but how you work.
Luckily, society has advanced and does not pigeonhole a professional so much for the image. Also in public medicine there are no labels or protocols.
If any father wanted to abandon my query because of my image, it would hurt me for the children, who are not to blame for the prejudices and stupidities of adults, but somehow I would rather not have that father with me. Human beings end up selecting in harmony, if we are intelligent.
I recognize that about five years ago I was trying to hide the facet of musician. I fell into that stupid trap myself. I thought that would make me seem less professional or rigorous.
I ended up with a large quota of patients in a town that I adore, Cehegín (Murcia), with many families following me in networks, coming to my concerts and sending me audios where the kids sing my songs.As a professional I know that in that town they respect me. I worked with rigor and honesty and being me, without hiding any facet and sometimes being quite a clown (in social networks, of course).
In Babies and more17 pediatricians and experts in children's health that follow in social networks to be well informedAnd your love of music, since when? How would you describe your songs? Which provide?
Music is a universal language that most living beings love innate. It is harmony, math, soul. For me it is the spirit.
About eight years ago my little brother brought a guitar to my parents' house, started with a classic and I got stung and also started playing.
I had been a poet since I was a child but as Cohen would say, I lacked the melody. It was a fascinating encounter.
Music really changed my life completely. I have lost things and above all very valuable people but I found myself.My songs are existentialist, thoughtful, a little scoundrels. I speak of sickness, of love, of instincts, of the vices, of how we look for a path, of how we have gradually dehumanized. It is a varied repertoire of about 75 songs.
In Babies and morePon music in your children's lives: nine benefits of music in babies and childrenI don't know what they can contribute. Every time a subject comes to someone I see it as a magical event. I still digest the feeling of being a musician and if I am ever able to use that universal language and reach someone at concerts or on my YouTube channel I feel real magic.
The truth is that The pediatrician Michelangelo costs the musician. The music is precarious, with a powerful market that engulfs everything, but that's another topic.
I am 35 years old and have a considerable Peter Pan syndrome. Will I be living the childhood that stole my illness? Insurance.What difference do you think you make when you treat children and their parents in your pediatric practice?
Michelangelo in his pediatric practice Now I work in the health center of San Cristóbal de los Ángeles. I am in Madrid for music, my second profession and part of my way of life.
Actually treating a child is treating their parents. You cannot treat one and not the others because that way there would be no follow-up or understanding. You must be a pediatrician and 'coaching'.Don't get me wrong, but Sometimes you have to protect the child from that anxiety of the parents. A child can be a happy brat of a lifetime or can be a hyperconsultative, anxious, medicalized child with adverse effects and with dozens of consultations to the center or hospital for those same snot, which I give as a punctual example.
The difference can be that relationship with the parents, that explain and reason. That reassure and instruct. I have experienced very bad things out of necessity and the cornerstone of my work is to respect health and preserve it.
What do you want to achieve in the near future?
In the future I want to continue along the same path, minimize errors, because I am terrified that something escapes me.
To date, in ten years of profession it has not happened to me, but we are human and sometimes the saturation of a query makes you feel fragile.
I currently have many open fronts that I would like to work on: food, sedentary lifestyle, demotivation of children and young people, denaturation with mobiles ...
We met you thanks to the concert you gave at the Granada Hospital. Why this initiative? How did the kids react? Have you thought about repeating the experience?
I went to say hello, like every time I have a free morning in Granada. There was a clown acting and I offered the possibility to the nurses who carry out the organization of this type of activities. In less than a week I was playing.
My music is not from children, or so I thought, contradicting my idea that it uses a universal language. I was wrong.Before I had played for my 'pacientillos' of Cehegín and a few months ago I gave a charity concert in favor of AFACMUR (Association of Family Members of Children With Cancer of the Region of Murcia).
Actually my first approach to a hospital was weeks ago, which I contacted to play from September for adult patients in Madrid.
Do you remember what I told you about my internal medicine rotation? It is a thorn nailed. Maybe I couldn't improve what I saw as an internist, but I can bring you some music. So I want to play in the hospital periodically.
I know that telling my story gives strength to these children and their families. I know the importance of breaking the routine and boredom, of taking the world to the hospital and breaking the isolation.As a resident I played with children as a secondary activity to the assistance activity. Now I want to return from time to time with fun as a primary activity.
I have healed a few months ago, mysteriously and miraculously. There are more things than medicines. I could try to describe the face of a mother whose daughter has what I had and to whom you say: look, be strong, I have healed, but it is impossible to define it. I could try to describe the faces of fathers and mothers to whom you tell them: look, I was patient in this hospital, then a pediatrician and today I come as a musician and I have healed, but it is impossible too.
I want to return the knowledge and luck that somehow gave me as a gift.We hope that you do repeat and that many more children can enjoy your closeness and your songs to avoid that weight with capital letters that is called DISEASE.
Photos | Assigned by Miguel Ángel Delgado,
