Why don’t hospitals have wifi?

Yesterday, a little rashy and irritated area on Posey’s backside began to look swollen and red and firm as a ripe tomato. I called the doctor, and drove her to the appointment with my head full of thoughts of all the things I had to do that afternoon.

Ha.

He took one look at her hinder and told me she needed to be admitted to the hospital (!) for IV antibiotics and that he would call for a surgical consult (yeah, I watch my medical dramas) because her little bottom tomato was an abscess (!!) that would have to be excised in the OR (!!!).

That was at 2 p.m. She went into surgery at 3:30 a.m. The procedure took about 20 minutes from the time I watched them wheel her into the room and the time the doctor found me in the waiting room watching “Columbo” on Bravo.

Everything was successful, and she has not been running a fever. We will be in the hospital again tonight at the very least so she can remain on IV antibiotics.

I would like to be able to complain about the experience, but everyone has been really great. Everyone except the anesthesiologist who came into the ED partition where we were being warehoused because the entire hospital was so full and said to us:

I realize she is adopted, but I’m still going to need a release signed by the two of you.

I gave him a swift blow to the nuts using my patented Cockpunch-Brand Brass Knuckles and, while the gas-sniffing quack was bent over in agony, my Hot Shot Husband dispatched a chair over the doctor’s head in one graceful sweep. I love that man o’ mine. It’s like we finish each other’s…lethal assaults.

Actually, it wasn’t the adoption dumbassery that made me so furious. It was the fact that, when I requested to be able to stay with Posey until she was put under because she has known us for less than two months and she was in pain and scared and she had already freaked out when I went to the bathroom and left her with her dad, and the last time someone handed her over to strangers the people she knew didn’t come back – the doctor just wiped his sleepy eyes and said, “Uh. No. We don’t do that. I mean, except in very special circumstances.”

(Our circumstances clearly didn’t qualify as “special.”)

Prick.

And then I started to cry, even though I was trying so hard not to be upset in front of Posey, who had been screaming herself hoarse all afternoon.

I would like to say I was calm and collected and the Perfect Mom all day, but it’s not true. It’s not true at all.

When I was sitting here in her room at 3 a.m., still waiting for her to be called down to surgery, I thought a lot about Moreena and Amy and all the other parents whose online thingys reveal them to be parents who parent gracefully in the face of big health questions marks.

One of the things that has always drawn me to their writing is the connection and insight it gives me to my own mother, who went through years of regular hospital stays with me when I was a child.

The experience made us closer. It gave us a relationship that we didn’t share with anyone else. At the same time, it divided us. The experience of being a child in the hospital and of being that child’s mother are both so overwhelming and so fundamentally different that I don’t think we could ever do more than guess what it was like for the other.

And there are all those ugly little comorbidities with chronic or longterm illness. Exhaustion. Frustration. Despair. Resentment.

We both felt those things. And in spite of logic or good sense, those feelings seek a target.

My mother told me one time that the best and worst day of her young life was the day she realized that, if I died, she would go on living. Until that day, she had taken for granted that my death would equal hers – that she loved me too much to go on without me.

Letting go of that freed her from an enormous burden and opened up for her the possibility of a future that did not hang in the balance of my health. But it also made her sad.

And it pissed me off because I could never really understand how she thought all that pain was hers. She wasn’t the one in the adjustable bed. She wasn’t the one who hated hearing the question “Do you have any pets?” because that’s what the anesthesiologists always asked her to gauge whether she was already under. No one was holding her down and giving her shots. She didn’t have to hold a pillow over her stomach to cough.

I was a child and could not recognize the perspectives of others.

I still have trouble with that sometimes, which is why I am so grateful for people who share their experiences.

Comments

[Mrs Figby]

Oh my gosh! Poor Posey! Poor you! There is NOTHING more stressful than a sudden surgery on your baby. I hope she's doing better and that you're ok too.

Thinking of all of you.

Oh, and I'm glad you beat the shit out of the anesthesiologist. What an asshole.

[Debberoo]

Yes poor Posey, poor you, it must have all been such a shock and scary too. Hope Posey is all better soon.

[ppb]

Oh my. I totally do not get why you didn't count as special circumstances. What an awful day! I hope she's better soon. And yes, hospitals should have wifi.