Means and Needs

needs: Hospital- the questions I wish doctors didn’t ask

By day 3 she had three doctors, in their own pecking order, asking the same questions and explaining the tests to come. As the results came in, the range of inquiry narrowed and they were getting to the end of possibilities. They were actually nearing the edge of their range. And by that afternoon, the middle doctor, confessed “We really don’t know what to do” and the questions shifted:

Who lives at home? Mum, Dad, my brother Dante and Preston our Beagle (and I wondered which was the wrong answer)

Is it happy at home? Yes, especially if we make pizza (was Pizza the reasons why we were there?)

Are they your biological parents? (And with that she doesn’t look at me, but she taps my hand with her signal. She’s done with this doctor and these questions. After a lifetime of doctors, my girl can see a dark silhouette. She knows these questions and who should be asking them.)

Do you or anyone you live with, have a mental health plan? (We are fucked if we do, a crazy family and fucked if we don’t, failing to get adequate support.)

These medications you are on, you get them from a doctor? (These medications! Prescribed by doctors, that she never wanted but always has!)

I drew the hard line, and ask for some time to rest. You can’t do much in hospital, they are pretty much running the shit show, but you can ask this, you can ask for rest.

Within hours, my girls’ treating team was changed and a different line of inquiry had her on the path to discharge.

needs: Hospital and bridging the family

The early trips to hospital are part of our family folklore and as the years have passed, we have watched our two kids unpack all the things that happened when they were apart. Hospital stays split our family in two. When she fractured her neck, playing the dodgeball the sport of champions, he was dropped at family friends who cared for him as their own. By day 3 on the spinal ward, I noticed he had grown an arm extension always carrying family contraband, a golden arches caramel sundae. He is a kid who knows which machine makes the good hot chocolate where the good blankets are on the ward, how to fit nicely behind a chair or under a bed during Rounds. And for those early hospital visits he was the kid of never-ending sleepovers and missed school. Work demands and general shock helped my beloved accept the kindness of friends to adopt our boy, but as the hospital stays continued, my boy became agitated, the calls more insistent on the details about his sister and the visits less frequent. It was clear he was struggling with the intrusion into his childhood. What was originally hanging out with friends, had begun to feel like being left behind.

We were doing a drive into ED. He was quietly sitting in the back seat asking if she was ok. I was driving, calling my beloved, making plans to meet up when he said clearly, determinedly, I’m not going anywhere. We took a beat- he wasn’t, he was going to stay with me until my beloved would come and then they would go home together.

Later, much later on the ward, he asleep in my arms, her finally asleep in the bed we were whispering plans, where he would be dropped off and what time my beloved would call in the next day, when a little hand pulled on mine and whispered “I don’t want to leave the family”.