I woke up today at 5am. I was in Shinjuku before any of the stores opened. The last time I was in Shinjuku that early, I was catching the first train home after being in Tokyo all night (not that I’d blog about it after the reactions I got from some mothers out there. You know who you are =) Why was I there at such an ungodly hour? So I could leave early to visit Layla in purgatory.
I got to the hospital around 17:30 to find that Layla had been shifted into another room. Instead of being one of three kids in a spacious room with a view of the nurse’s station she was crammed into a corner of an 8-cage room with no windows and barely any light. The 5x3ft crib that is her prison is about all the space we were afforded, plus a foot or two beside the bed to sit on a stool. Definitely a step or two below the Ritz.
As for Layla, I wish I could say her spirits were up. At least I can say her oxygen levels seemed to be. The poor kid seemed depressed and withdrawn, not wanting to do much of anything but be held and stare at the other coughing/crying/sleeping/etc babies she shared the room with. There were glimmers of the little kid at times, but more often than not she was pretty down in the dumps.
Every time a nurse walked into the room, the words “DOCTOR SCARY!” echoed through the halls of the hospital. I’m not much one for doctors or hospitals either, but to say Layla was hysterical upon seeing nurses would be an understatement. On the bright side, I know I don’t need to worry about having to pay her way through medical school – the psychological scars she’s getting from this experience all but guarantees that she won’t want to work anywhere near a hospital.
Unfortunately, despite my initial hopes that her oxygen levels were up, I heard some bad news. The doctor told us we should consider upping her daily medication because she isn’t responding well to the hospital treatment. That’s something we’re going to have to discuss and think about.
The other bad news, especially for Layla, was that the nurse wanted to switch her nostril tube for a full face mask covering her nose and mouth. After she settled down, she seemed perfectly okay with the new mask, but for the first 5 or 10 minutes she complained that she couldn’t get her finger up her nose.
By 20:00, the lights went down and all the kids were getting tucked into their beds to sleep. She didn’t want us to leave, but determination gave way to exhaustion and despite a death grip on my shirt, I eventually worked my way free.
1 down, 4 to go…
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