Archive for November 21st, 2008

It’s a hard day when your child goes into the operating room, even for something routine, like removal of pins in a broken femur during recovery from a football injury, even if he’s pre-admitted, even if you’ve been though something much worse (the original break) just four weeks before.

The morning was off to an inauspicious start when we arrived at Cooks Children’s hospital to find valet parking $5 at the front door. I don’t pay for valet parking, at a restaurant or a hospital and didn’t have time to go to the administration and read them the riot act about the impropriety of making people pay for the privedlege of letting their kids off on the curb instead of in the middle of the driveway. My son, on crutches, had to navigate from the outside lane, and hurry about it because other cars were waiting due to the valets plying their trade. You’d think the almost-incapacitated would have a few minutes to get out of their vehicles. 

We showed up in the surgery waiting room at 7 a.m. as directed, and were hurried into an exam room. Nurses asked, for the fourth or fifth time since we started working on this surgery yesterday afternoon at pre-admission, “allergic to anything?” They put on numbing cream on the back of his hand and got the IV installed, and though they tried their best to make it painless, he said it still hurt. Soon after this the anesthesiologist came in, took down some details about my son’s diabetes, and asked us if we had any questions. The one I wanted answered, “How many times in a case like this does someone fail to come back out of anesthesia?” was impossible to ask. I was grateful to see that the anesthesiologist was not the one I already know, who is that dad of my daughter’s ex-boyfriend. Life is made of such small mercies. 

The bright spot in my morning was when the “real” doctor, the orthapedist who was doing the operating, came in, just before my son went to surgery. The orthapedist looks a little like Russel Crowe, although he has less hair, and his “assistant” a resident, looks like… maybe Ben Stiller. These two also have the most personality of anyone we talked to during the ordeal. Long sigh. I told the orthapedist that I hoped no prayer-for-when-you’re-at-death’s-door was necessary for something routine like this. He smiled, said of course not, and I went out to the waiting room.

I tried to write a post about the Trinity Trails (I have since finished it at home.) But despite the fact that Cooks has free wi-fi for research, despite the fact that I had a simple fill-in-the-blanks format for my story, I couldn’t get anywhere. The letters I had planned to write sat unwritten. I checked my email, searched again for info for my story. Called my husband. He didn’t pick up. Tried to write some more. Talked to a kid, maybe 18, who wore cornroaws with clear beads on the ends of each braid , who had a copy of the Star-Telegram and was talking to a woman I assume was his mom about the jobs in the classified.  “Waiter,” he said, circling an ad. “That would be good.”

I was the only person who didn’t manage to get a family member to come along for the surgery waiting room, I realized. At least the only one I see. I made it anyway. After an hour, the doctors came out, and announced my son’s surgery a success, that he was in recovery and I would see him in a few mnutes.  For some reason I was starving, so I asked them if I had time to get breakfast, and they said sure, go ahead. I went down and ordered an omelette from Sir Eatsalot Grill on the first floor, with bacon and ham, and cheese. It looked so good. But before I could sit down I was being paged. Apparently they were ready for my to sit by my son’s bedside and help him wake up. I rushed into an elevator behind a man wearing Star Wars scrubs. “Fifth floor,” he told me as we started to go up. 

“Do you work here?” I asked, indicating the outfit.

“No, I’m here for my son. He’s got vomiting, diarrhea, they don’t know what’s wrong, it’s a mess, so I borrowed these scrubs from my dad,” he said. I looked at him. The marks of stress and worry were on his face. Somehow I knew, by his demeanor, by the symptoms, that the child is young, perhaps younger than two years … he is one of the many babies I’ve seen being cared for here. In the surgical area, I watched children barely old enough to walk, in gowns and diapers. A gurney went by with a tiny child on it, IV pole swinging the the rolling motion.

They don’t even know what is wrong with this child! I thought.Sympathy flooded my heart.“I’ll keep him in my prayers,” I said.

“God bless you,” the dad told me ,visibly grateful for the support.

I went back up, my head spinning. Probably the little boy will be fine. But not knowing, that’s so hard for him and for his parents. I got my son, the football player, back from the nurses, with a fresh black and red cast, and my husband showed up to drive us home. The second half of the day winds up fraught with distractions and distress, perhaps because I am exhausted by the ordeal.  But every time I feel it’s all too much, I remember to pray for the boy on the 5^th floor, who was so sick and whose parents don’t know what is wrong. I am grateful that I remember them, and somehow I trust that for him and for all of us, everything will be all right.