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Day 11: This is Annie's incentive spirometer, she was given it when we arrived at the hospital almost twenty days ago.  It's to help prevent infections like pneumonia from settling in to her lungs.  She was told to breath in on the tube ten times an hour.  We've averaged about six or seven times a day, less when she was really nauseous.  We got more ambitious back when she had a cough, smudge on her lungs and resulting chest x-rays.  Yesterday we got even more ambitious.

I made it a goal for myself to get to know some of the other parents this go-around.  We kept to ourselves last time mostly because we were freaked out by the whole thing and rarely left the room.  This time I'm like the Welcome Wagon chatting with anyone who happens to pause in my vicinity.  This mostly happens at the microwave in the "warming room."  This is a room outside the ward with a variety of electric cooking appliances for families to prepare or warm some food.  Since we live so close to the hospital all I've done so far is warm water.

I'm thinking I need to change my "warming room" schtick because I'm beginning to feel like the student who gets an A and goes around asking everyone else how they did on the test.  I'll start in with the small talk and then learn how this parent has been with their child at the hospital for six months, a year, how there is no end date for them at this point, how their home and family isn't a drive down the 210 but plane rides away, how there are spouses and other children left at home.  These parents don't get every other night off like me, their child doesn't have visits from friends and a quick run for the toy left at home.

Then yesterday we learned about a five-year-old girl who was in remission from cancer but then got an infection in her lungs.  She was brought from elsewhere to our floor to see if something could be done, then she was released back to her hospital but ultimately nothing more could be done and she was allowed to return home where she passed away on Mother's Day.  So now we dedicate our spirometer sessions to her memory.  There are a lot of hard things you learn living on a pediatric cancer ward.