moments from the hospital

milo and grandma
Originally uploaded by not halfway there.

Me having to do something horrid and saying “I’m so, so, sorry, this is going to hurt, but we have to do this so you can get better.” And Moomin’s tiny voice through sobs going, “I know Mom. Thank you,” but the “thank you” turning into a scream.

That was horrible beyond compare. I thought of all the parents who go through that kind of scene daily, whose kids have chronic problems and suffer terribly. Moomin’s cousin has been through so much!

Anyway, things are looking up. My mom called last night, offering to fly out and help. Sometimes her help just makes me more tense, but then I started to cry a little with relief. I felt a weird euphoria, because I knew she’d really help, sticking through the whole scene and taking a huge weight off my shoulders.

We expected to go home first thing in the morning. By noon the doctor’s gloomy predictions that it would be one more night were coming true. I was falling apart, even though my mom was there. Though she was helping, I still had to be on top of everything, to talk to doctors and nurses, to help decide whether to go home or not.

At home, unravelling or un-knotting, melting or falling apart, giving over responsibility to my mom, reverting to a drifting sullen teenager, grateful, hiding in my room . . . and then finally Rook got here and everything felt right again. It was worst when I would come home from the hospital to an empty house to catch guilty moments of drugged sleep interrupted only by nightmares that I was waking up.

Moomin’s so relieved. He can get around. No more tubes anywhere. We read in his “How Our Bodies Work, How We Grow” book about intestines, the stomach, blood, blood vessels, and lungs. I hope it helps him understand what happened. At least on the physical level if not on the level of “why do people suffer”.

Now, for the next few days I have the luxury of falling apart. A little hiding in my room, crying, sounds like a marvellous vacation from being the Person Who Gently Gives the Horrible Medicine and Holds You Down for the Insertion of Needles While You’re Out of Your Mind on Pain and Drugs and Then Chews Out Doctors with Cold Fury While Demanding More Pain Meds and Popsicles.

I’m grateful to the hospital for saving his life by removing his appendix, but I hate the hospital for injuring him further and for giving him a secondary infection . . . careless, & callous.

It’s good to be home.