Dr Michelle Hills on children's palliative care, storytelling, and the book publishers said nobody would buy. Get A Shift On S2 E6.
Most people think palliative care starts at the very end. Dr Michelle Hills has spent nearly 25 years proving otherwise.
She's a paediatric palliative care consultant working across hospitals, children's hospices and family homes. She's looked after thousands of children with shortened lives, and the families around them. Palliative care, as she describes it, runs from the point of diagnosis all the way through to death and bereavement. Sometimes it starts before a baby is even born.
The turning point came at the Houses of Parliament. She told one story, watched it connect, and realised that teaching other doctors would never be enough. The public needed to understand this too. That speech became The Wrong Order of Things, published this month by Mirror Books, built from anonymised composite stories of real children.
Agents and publishers loved her writing and told her the subject mattered. Then they said nobody would buy a book like this. One agent said something she carried through every rejection after that: you only need one yes.
In this episode:
- What paediatric palliative care actually involves, from diagnosis through to bereavement support
- Why families fear the referral more than the illness, and what changes when someone explains it
- Morphine, sedation and symptom control, and why good symptom management can mean people live longer
- Withdrawing treatment, what's legal in the UK, and what the public doesn't realise is possible
- Why hospices are full of hydrotherapy pools, cinema rooms and trips out
- Talking to your own children about death, funerals and what they'd want
- Writing the book: the rejections, the imposter syndrome, and getting flagged by the algorithm for explaining morphine
- Why she's stayed at 80% clinical and calls it a job that has grown rather than shifted
Michelle also talks about her own family, sitting with her father as he died, explaining death to her husband who had never seen it, and coming home late to stand at her children's bedroom door watching their chests go up and down.
There's talk of children dying in this episode. If that's close to home right now, go gently.
Worth listening to if you're a parent, a healthcare professional, or someone who's been avoiding a conversation you know you need to have.
Follow Michelle and get the book here:
The Wrong Order of Things (Mirror Books) is on Amazon, in bookshops, on Kindle, and as an audiobook read by Michelle on Audible and Spotify.
All of Michelle's links: https://linktr.ee/dr_michelle_hills
Michelle's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-hills-b848b589/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michellehills_dr
Follow David / Via Nova here:
David's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidbirchmore/
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