Part 10 : Babies DO NOT belong in hospitals
Dan’s rare cancer qualified him for a case study with the hospital. Students, residents, and interns were constantly pouring themselves into our room. Clipboards and questionnaires in hand, they would perform pretend exams on Dan, taking his temperature, and feeling his pulse. Huntsman was a learning hospital and being a patient there meant you belonged to the science of cancer. As a new mom for the second time around, it was more than frustrating to try and nurse my infant and settle him quietly down for a nap with young ambitious ‘wannabe’ doctors bounding in every 45 minutes while we were there. Still I was grateful for the doctors who were trying to better the industry and their eagerness to get their hands dirty with knowledge.
The wait for Dan’s injection took so long that we had time to order lunch from the upstairs restaurant, play card games which we frequently did in our marriage, watch two full movies and then order dinner before we were told the prescription was almost ready and chemo time would be underway soon. Why in the world did they require us to be at the hospital at noon if we weren’t going to get poisoned until 8 pm at night? I missed my other son and wanted to go give him a kiss good night, but was committed to being with my husband. We were a team, and I was loyal to being his support. I didn’t want to be away from him. I needed to feel needed in order to avoid being left alone with my thoughts and their ability to run away with panic and worry.
Realizing I was off duty for a couple hours I wandered into the hallway. It was so quiet you could hear a pin drop, and I subconsciously tiptoed my way around. Each floor had a computer room and visiting quarters that was not only beautiful, but also open and inviting. It resembled an art gallery, clean and quite, a place to sit and reflect. I had regularly been sending out emails to update our family and friends. Feeling compelled to sit and write while my thoughts were fresh I went to the computer room first. The presidential suite we were lucky to have was right next door to this room and made it easy for me to go back and check on Dan and the baby. They were both still sleeping. I left Ethan in his car seat and sat by Dan in the recliner. His good hand was closet to me and I reached onto the bedside where it was and slip mine underneath his. His wedding ring caught my attention and it made me think about the same finger on his opposite hand that was the cause for all this trouble.
Stupid finger! It was almost an embarrassing story to tell people. “I almost died once from a broken finger”, didn’t nearly sound as dramatic as “I fell off a mountain and lived to tell about it”. There was no comparison to the two. My mind wandered into pointless thoughts like this the more I sat watching Dan, waiting for something to happen accompanied by the annoying sound waves from the machines pounding into my head. I got up for another break.
It became a ritual of mine to go sit in the large visiting room, sit in different chairs, and zone out. Often I would lie on my back across three of the chairs without arms and star at the ceiling as if I were trying to make out shapes from passing clouds. People were always coming and going through this open area to gain access to the back hallway and a short cut to the patient rooms on the east floor from the elevators. I became a habitual people watcher while I pretended to read a book or doing something else. Several of us were on the same chemo schedule of 3 weeks off, and 1 week on, although most patients spent more time at the hospital because of complications during their off weeks than the ones on. A middle aged woman with black hair sat by me a couple times and told me the progress of her teenage son who was in a neighboring room. He was an athlete before he got cancer. Now he was so weak from his treatments he could hardly walk. I felt bad for her of course, but never as bad as I felt for myself. The timing of my trial couldn’t have been worse. I was sure no one could compare.
Babies don’t belong in cancer hospitals, and toting my 2 months old around the hospital gave me first place rights to complain. During one my ‘hide-out’ breaks in this room I began to notice the same man coming to visit everyday. He couldn’t be more than 5 years older than me. He always brought a toddler with him and would disappear around the corner with her to the back rooms. I could only imagine he was visiting a parent or an older relative. One of his visits, after he routinely disappeared around the corner, he reemerged chasing his toddler toward the room I adopted for alone time. A woman, young, bald and thin, followed him. He continued to chase the baby girl with sparse blonde curls bounding from her head while the woman obviously tired sat down in the first chair she came to. She was beautiful and wore a long skirt to hide her thin legs, and a smile on her face as she watched the grown baby stagger away from her father. The man caught up to the baby and swooped her up in his arms. He brought the little girl to the woman and set her in her lap and sat down in the chair next to them. The baby was hers. I couldn’t take my eyes away from watching them. It was obvious the woman had been stricken with cancer for a while now, maybe shortly after her baby was born. The amount of weight loss and thick dark circles around the eyes always gave people away. She was so thin there would be no way for her to lift that baby, let alone carry her anywhere by herself. My thoughts shifted to my own baby, who was back in our room still asleep in his car seat. I felt guilt for being thankful our situation wasn’t reversed. I humbly turned over the first place complaint voucher to this mother in my mind and made my way back to our room. I wanted to be with my baby.
Dan was still peacefully sleeping. Preparing for sleep myself, I began the process of folding down the couch to a bed. Although the hospital was nice, nothing replaced sleeping at home, and the make shift bed was stiff and uncomfortable. I didn’t complain, realizing it could be worse, and I wanted to be with my husband even at a few discomforts along the way. I picked up my son from his car seat and lay him in a bed of pillows where he would be safe and close to me. I was not used to sleeping solo and from that point on at all hospital stays I employed Ethan to sleep next to me and help me not feel alone.
The nights were restless as two-hour intervals would be checkpoints for the nurses to chart Dan’s progress and reactions to the drugs. Between feeding an infant and the hospital staff I was becoming accustomed to living without sleep.
Morning soon came and I was nervous to see what would happen. I didn’t know what I should expect. Dan wouldn’t wake up on his own, the drugs were hard at work keeping his body in war with itself. His energy was gone and sleep was all he wanted. The nurses required him to wake up and try to eat something. He hadn’t felt sick yet and tried to joke a little and be jovial about nothing bad happening yet. Everyone knows the classic side effects of chemo; losing your hair and a lot of throwing up.
He hardly ate anything and complained about the bad taste in his mouth. The chemo was permeating his entire body by now and food was the last thing on his mind.
My in-laws had been staying the weekend with Dan’s aunt and came to visit in the late afternoon. I was grateful I would get in a longer break and knew the visit would lift my husband’s spirits. I planned to go visit my older son and ground myself to a normal activity with him; like going to the park. The door opened and Dan’s parents entered the room hold suitcases. Although confused, I wasn’t surprised. It was obvious they were attempting to take over. For as long as I knew them they were consistent and devoted to controlling any amount of their children’s adult lives as they could. As a result their children had married and moved out of state far away from them. They considered me an annoyance in their conquest and someone they could easily bully into submission.
Early in our marriage Dan had a lot of conflict with his parents for the amount of disrespect they gave me not only as a person, but also as his wife. We vowed to tolerate their antics for the sake of peace since we only saw them a couple of days a year at most.
“Hello dear!”, his mother said with disdain as she passed me and went to her son’s bedside. She leaned down to kiss him on his forehead. His father also said hi and then plunked himself down on the only couch in the room and set up an office of computers and telephones to keep himself busy with work, as he clearly planned on being there several days. After looking over her son for the first time in a year his mother sat in the chair next to the bed and grabbed his hand. The wedding ring I was gazing at the night before was now engulfed by his mothers grasp. She looked at me and snidely said, “ok dear, we are here, and you can go now, goodbye!” Dan and I looked at each other at the same time. We both waited for the telepathic message to come from the other to know what we should say or how we should react.
“Ok….”, I said with gritted teeth and a forced smile, “I’ll be back in about 5 hours”, I continued. I already knew what they were going to say, but I refused to let them feel like what they were about to do was okay or going to be easy. Somehow they never thought to talk to me about their plans before carrying them out. I knew I was of little consequence to them, a thorn in their side. I hated feeling like a ‘nobody’ to them, even though I had bore two of their grandchildren. If only they knew the difference it would have made in my feelings toward to hear them say, ‘thank you’, ‘we are glad our son has you’, or merely “how are you holding up?” These simple words would carry kindness into my heart and motivation to want them more a part of our lives.
“No, you can say goodnight to Dan now, we have brought our bags and are staying the night. There is no need for you to come back, we’ll bring him home in a few days.” She rambled on without looking directly at me, as if she were looking for the remote to the TV. I didn’t want a fight and although Dan had a worried look on his face that said ‘Don’t leave me alone with them for that long’, I knew I didn’t need their permission to be there. If anything they would need mine if a challenge of guardianship arose. I walked over to Dan’s beside and gave him as good a hug as possible. I knew every part of his body ached and anything touching him hurt. Every part of my spirit ached, and anything threatening to dampen it hurt just the same. I whispered that I would come back tomorrow and when I pulled away he had a reassured smile on his face. We were like two kids who were keeping a secret from our parents.
I picked up my bags and the car seat carrying our son. My shoulders were overloaded with weight, physically resembling the way they felt for several weeks without carrying anything at all. I walked to the elevator and pushed the button. As I walk to my car I felt the warm breeze on a spring night and noticed the sunset settling over the valley. My mind was blank as I drove home. I called my mother and asked her to bring Cole home. Although I disliked my mother in law a great deal, I knew it would be important for her to spend alone time with her son. I needed alone time with my son too, and he needed that from me. It would be the first time in months that I would get to snuggle his small body. I put the baby down in his crib and curled up next to Cole in his toddler bed. He had no idea what I had been doing for two days, all he knew was that I had been gone and he missed me. He turned his body to mine and wrapped his arms around me as best he could. He closed his eyes and instantly fell asleep. I watched him sleep for a few minutes before I allowed myself to close my own eyes. I still saw my three year old as a baby, and probably always would. As much as I disliked Dan’s mother, I knew she felt the same way about her son as I did about mine.
