Life in the Hospital
October 26, 2006 at 6:58 (This is the second installment in a three-part series. You may wish to scroll down one entry to "Why We Support St. Jude's" to read the first part.)
We were in the process of being discharged from the hospital the next day when the nurse took our son’s temperature one more time for his chart, and he was running a fever. His discharge was cancelled, and he was returned to the stainless steel crib. We were left waiting for answers.
For the next week or so, he endured a battery of tests to try and locate the source of the infection causing his fever. His ears, nose, and throat were repeatedly checked, his lungs and heart listened to, his body x-rayed. He had blood draw after blood draw after blood draw, including several in the middle of the night. E and I felt ourselves dying inside each time we faced the trauma of another visit from the phlebotomist. We never got to sleep, and neither did our son. His fever raged on. He stopped nursing, and my stress reached new heights as my patience reached a new low.
When an intern examining my son's abdomen said to another intern that "God, this kid was a screamer," I looked him straight in the face and told him that if five strangers came and pinned him down, pulled off his trousers, pressed on a surgical site, and manhandled his testicles, I’d imagine he’d make a little noise, no? I was pissed. Pissed enough to ream him out in front of the head of surgery. I wanted him and the other "not-quite-doctors" to get the message how STUPID and insensitive his comment was.
And while all this was happening in our sad little corner of the hospital, there were far more wrenching stories unfolding around me. Walking the floor, I could see the children that should have had hair but didn’t, the mothers with frozen expressions of grief, the kids walking with their IV poles, the sunken-eyed ones who couldn’t get out of bed, and the unending background noise of crying babies and toddlers.
In the morning I could tell when the doctors started making their rounds before dawn because the sound of crying children would start on one end of the hall and methodically increase as they went from room to room. I heard a little one screaming “Mama! Mama! Mama!” but Mama wasn't there to answer the call.
The hospital, located in an urban area, attracted patients from every socio-economic group. Often, there was only one parent involved in the child’s life. Often, their jobs and circumstances didn’t allow them to spend hours at the hospital with their child. And often, dare I say it, the parents didn’t give a damn. They viewed a hospitalized child as one in Medicaid-funded daycare. One family dropped their child off for surgery and LEFT for the day. Oh yeah, why miss a chance to go out to eat and hangout at the mall.
Remember the baby crying in the room next door? Its mother finally showed up on the weekend, with several other children in tow. When her child started crying, the woman screamed at it, “Shut up! Shut up! Will you just shut up?” A sick baby, alone all week, being yelled at during its only visit from its mother. I felt bile rise in my throat. Life in the hospital was truly hell.
(To be continued...)
October 26, 2006
Copyright 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved. www.v-grrrl.com
Reader Comments (10)
Reading your story makes me want to go and volunteer at this hospitals & others like it just so I can hug and hold these children and make them see that there ARE people who care and love them.
I had my son, who is now 11, read the whole story. I was thinking he might be moved by it or full of questions. Instead he was curiously dispassionate about it...
:)
I can't even bare to think about the poor babies who cry out for their mom's and their mom's aren't there. Excuse my language but FUCK THAT. Especially the mom who was yelling. Immediatly sterilize her and give her kids to someone who will love them and be there with them.