The Hospital Room

The post below was written Wednesday afternoon, but the servers in this hospital wouldn’t let me post…so when I refer to “yesterday” throughout, it really means Tuesday…

Sorry I haven’t updated. I tried. But there’s no wi-fi in the rooms, only in the waiting room and the cafeteria, and when I went down there to post, the servers were all down. I could read email, but I couldn’t blog. I’m sitting in front of the vending machines, and it’s a bit like Vegas around here since I haven’t been outside in two days—I have no idea what time it is…thank you all for your supportive messages. The Bee seems to be perking up, even since I wrote the post below…

“She won the lottery.” That’s what the very nice anesthesiologist said yesterday when we went back to Recovery to see The Bee after surgery. Some kids who have cleft palates end up not having enough tissue on either side of their mouths to fold over into the open space and suture together for a new roof…but The Bee did. Relief, relief, relief. His lordship also managed to close the alveolar cleft (the cleft in her right front gum), which we weren’t sure was going to happen today or not—this saves us a future surgery. So, she had her gum, her hard palate, and her soft palate all completely closed…basically, her entire mouth, front to back—now, comes the hard part: the first 10 days. No solid foods, no prodding toys, no fingers, no pacifiers, no sippy cups, no elbows.

And I have to say she’s my girl: her sense of rank injustice is finely honed. She is refusing to eat, refusing to drink, doesn’t want anything or anyone near her mouth. She is denying us. She is pissed off. We are probably here another night (unless she wakes up from her current nap requesting hamburgers out of the blue) because she is guarding her wound with a fierce mama-bear ‘tude. And the girl who never showed a sign of grieving in China? Yesterday afternoon and evening, she was refusing to make eye contact with me…she had her little spot on the ceiling that she would disappear into, and her eyes stuck to it as if…as if…as if she had just been handed to us by an ayi at Metcha. And she shut down, withdrew inside herself, glazed over. The nurse was waving her hand in front of The Bee’s eyes this morning and getting…nothing. I imagine Nurse was a bit worried. I just wondered in that AP wonderment way where The Bee was, where she had disappeared to. I knew she’d be back. It took a Coke bottle to bring her around to a small smile this afternoon. She loves twisting the top off and on, off and on.

Most of yesterday and this morning she spent in my arms. She is asking for comfort, wanting to be held. Just not fed. Not medicated. Not fussed over. I had heard to wear an old shirt, and it’s a good thing. Yesterday there was quite a lot of blood, viscous blood. Today there isn’t any, but her lip area remains quite swollen. At first, she was as scared about the arm splints as anything else, but today she is playing with some toys they brought her from the playroom, and she has already adapted to the Frankenstein-creature sort of arm motions she has to make. She did sleep in her bed last night, and at 3:15 in the morning, I woke up to find her playing with her stuffed panda bear—and her IV fallen out from the foot catheter where it’s supposed to be keeping her hydrated. Instead, it had spent three hours emptying itself onto her blankets. Her bedding was soaked.

His lordship had left instructions (“orders” in hospital-speak, doncha know) to feed her only breast milk or formula. WTF? So, even though he met us a couple times, including yesterday after the surgery, and had just spent two hours working on her, he fails to realize that (a) she is 2 years (and one month) old and hasn’t been on formula for months now, and (b) she is adopted, so chances are pretty effing good that I’m not breastfeeding. Most of the literature I’ve been given about the procedure is written with a much younger patient in mind, the 6-9-month-old, homegrown patient—the assumption being that the prescribed liquid diet is no big accommodation since the patient is only consuming breast milk or formula anyway. Ha. The Bee had lasagna on Monday night, thank you very much. And carrots and zucchini and cucumbers and french fries and a bite of bbq ribs. I had the same problem with the literature at the pediatrician’s, written for the homegrown, bio kids only, when I first brought The Bee in to that office…all sorts of genetics questions, for instance. I get my ire up at the sight of exclusivity. It’s time there was inclusive language for the experience of adoption, and I dare say, for the experience of special needs. Isn’t this an accessibility issue?

And then the peds resident came in last night on her rounds, and the conversation goes something like this:

Dr.-To-Be: So, was his cleft palate congenital?…er…has he had it since the day he was born?

SBird: [Let the seething commence.] Her. She. She’s a she. And, yes, it was congenital.

DTB: Sorry. She. It’s her name that made me think…er, so, who’s your pediatrician? I mean, why did they wait so long to fix the defect?

SBird: [JFC, am I really having this conversation? Did this yahole read her chart? Bother to talk to a nurse? Are they this effing insensitive on Gray’s Anatomy?] We’ve only had her four months. She’s adopted. We got in as soon as we could.

DTB: Oh. She’s from another country, you mean?

SBird: She’s from China.

DTB: Oh! Wow. She is soooo lucky. [Beaming brightly at me.]

SBird: [Past the point of wanting to blow DTB’s brains out…moved on to wanting to blow my brains out…] We’re lucky, actually.

So, I am assuming we will have another night here. So I can hone my sarcasm further and The Bee can practice her Grand Gesture of Denial.