Smiles Amid Struggles

Lots of stress today, one of our patients is not doing well after his surgery, and the team is filled with sorrow and worry. So much about the medical field that I am unaware of…the sheer responsibility of someone’s life. Yet I walk around the hospital and find smiles and kindness from the people here. One woman came up to me to thank the Cardiostart team for coming all this way and to say what a difference the surgery made in her life.

The waiting rooms hold so many people — maybe 30-40 people– all waiting to see a doctor. They wear their best clothes and the family comes with them. The various halls in the hospital have families huddled together and someone from the family, usually the mom, sleeps on the floor next to their child or husband or mom. No one is alone at this hospital. The heart area has one big ward with 12 beds and everyone seems to talk to each other. There is no privacy. Families bring their own sheets and blankets and food. They launder their own sheets and then put them on the lawn to dry, which works if there is not a torrential rain. If they need tubing for an IV, they send the family out to purchase it. But through all the waiting, the sitting on hard benches, the worrying how they can afford the care, still I see smiles.

Today Sandy, a Biotech engineer, and I grabbed a bag of gorgeous puppets from the Cardiostart stockpile and walked around playing with kids and finding their smiles. I love watching the kids interact with the puppets. Now where are the bubbles? Or playdough? I’ll have to go on a scouting mission soon.

It’s all up and down here though, crashing down when things turn sour. In the peds emergency room, a mom started just wailing…wailing. Her baby had stopped breathing and there was no one, no one, there to help her. She screamed but nothing was done. There are just two nurses in the building and they were tending to other children. I don’t know how to register her terror. I wish that someone would fund the peds unit. A university needs to come in and help. They have a great heart section, a great HIV building and infectious disease area so on with the children!

On our walk with puppets, we stopped at the bed of a little boy in his tribal outfit, beautiful bright fabric wrapped around him. I asked what he wanted in the way of puppets and he picked the beautiful fairy. He was too shy to speak but understood what we were saying. Cardiostart also has some coloring books and I brought him one and crayons. Simple things. Then he was given a hospital gown and his mom carried him into the operating room. Yep, carried him in. (The older patients actually walk in themselves). Open heart surgery.