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Kid-friendly hospital is nice even when your kid’s older
(by Jeff Fister - September 16, 2009)
It’s a great view from the 10th floor of St. Louis Children’s Hospital looking west.
From my son’s room, I could see the green-tree canopy of Forest Park blending into the high-rise apartments along Skinker and the skyscrapers of downtown Clayton. High above the city, I couldn’t believe how green and peaceful everything looked.
This serene view was an unexpected bonus during a stressful time. Earlier this summer, my son had lung surgery at Children’s and he spent nearly a week there. As a parent, there’s nothing more worrisome than having a kid in the hospital. Routines are disrupted, other kids get neglected and everything seems to revolve around the patient. Who’s going to the hospital? Does he need anything? What did the doctors say? In many ways, you have to give up control over your own child and turn it over to highly trained professionals.
My son was unusual in one way — yes, he’s my child, but he’s also 22 years old. When you think of Children’s Hospital, you think of younger kids. But since his condition was something that had been treated since he was 17, and his pediatrician was still his doctor, he was able to still go to Children’s.
And my wife and I were glad about that. A lot of it has to do with the environment at the hospital.
It’s a little strange at first, especially if you have an older kid. We parked in the garage and walked to the elevators. When the doors closed, a distended child’s voice said, “Welcome to Children’s Hospital.” After I pressed the button for my floor, the voice popped up again when I was ready to leave the elevator. “Third floor,” it said.
There is a large glass-wrapped walkway that leads from the elevator to the hospital. Large cartoon animal figures were everywhere, and above my head chugged a model train on a track near the ceiling. Was this Disneyland?
The guard at the entrance of the hospital set the tone for virtually every other employee I met there. From the janitors to the nurses to the administrators to the surgeons, people were polite, courteous and helpful. It’s as if everyone got the memo, and believed it. It’s hard to find any store or business these days with such unfailingly good customer service.
But clearly, this isn’t just any enterprise; caring for sick kids is a mission, and employees there seem to embrace it.
My son was in the hospital to have his collapsed lung repaired. He’d had the condition since his senior year of high school, and throughout college his lung had collapsed several times. After each incident, some more serious than others, the lung would heal and he’d feel fine for a while. But finally, after an occurrence last December, the surgeon recommended a procedure that would, he said, give him a 95 percent probability of not having it happen again. Years ago, before such surgery, people would live limited lives, like the old uncle with the “bad lung” who couldn’t move around much.
This was not a genetic thing; it tends to happen in tall, skinny males whose lungs are compressed by virtue of their anatomy.
While my son hated the idea of the pain of surgery — he’d had chest tubes inserted the first time his lung collapsed — he knew his window of opportunity was limited. He decided he would have it done in June, after he graduated, allowing time to recover before starting a new job in September.
On the morning of the surgery, we waited with my son in a small room. Nurses came and went and started “prepping” him. Finally a team of doctors and operating room people walked in and asked some questions. He was just about ready to go when a young medical student asked my son if he had any piercings. Oops. My son earlier in the year was the first of my boys to get a small ring in the side of his ear. The med student explained that an earring like that could conduct electricity from one of the machines, so it would have to come off. My wife bravely assisted my son, and it took awhile, as apparently he’d gotten the accessory for free during some campus festival and it wasn’t the highest quality. You get what you pay for…
The surgery went fine, but recovery was long and painful. It seemed a lot of the challenge was maintaining the right mix of painkillers. A chest tube was inserted for the first few days, and my son found it difficult to get comfortable.
Even when awake, he wasn’t always lucid. When I walked in one day, he was glued to the television watching C-Span. We don’t have cable at home, and he had become fascinated with the drone of our nation’s lawmakers as they paraded on and off the channel. At one point he picked up the phone and said he was going to call C-Span to make a comment about some environmental issue. I could imagine the broadcaster saying, “OK, next on C-Span we have a call from Dan in St. Louis, who’s in the hospital and heavily medicated…”
The hospital, like the employees, is bright and cheery. On one floor was a mini-library, which had computer terminals and always some kind of snack. There’s also a rooftop garden, with flowers, fountains and telescopes to look through. The cafeteria, encased in a huge colorful atrium, features a life-size hot air balloon that slowly rises and falls.
The pleasant surroundings help to mask the fact that having sick children often can be sad and emotionally draining. We were lucky in the fact that our son was there to get better, knowing that the surgery would greatly improve his life. It was hard not to notice some of the small children who were there for much more serious conditions.
On the fifth day of his stay, the doctors removed the chest tube. The next day, they said, he could come home.
It used to be that leaving a hospital could take all day: the paperwork, the delays, getting the prescriptions. But this time, it was quite easy. The nurse came in, asked me to sign a few things, gave us a few instructions and we were free to leave.
It took some time to gather up all of the stuff my son had accumulated in the past week. Meanwhile he had gotten out of bed and was standing near the door. “Dad, let’s go,” he said. “Go on ahead to the elevator,” I said. “I’ll be right there.”
I picked up the bags and took one last look out the window of the 10th floor. Yes, it was a beautiful view, but I hoped I’d never have to see it again.
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