The First Night

After arriving at Sick Kids, I made inquiries and found my way to an isolation room in the emergency department. By this time it was close to midnight. Melodina was in a bed and hooked up to intravenous antibiotics.Indira was on the floor on a small piece of foam that folded into a chair during the day. Someone had supplied her with sheets and a pillow. We waited for a while and a doctor came in, asked some questions and told us that Melodina would be going upstairs to be admitted as soon as a bed was ready. Indira was nervous and scared. After some discussion we agreed that I would go and book a nearby hotel room and come back. After Melodina was admitted I would stay with Melodina and Indira could try to get some sleep at the hotel.

I returned just in time to accompany Indira and Melodina on her rolling bed with attached IV stand on wheels to ward 7C, the general paediatrics ward. Melodina's room had her bed , a chair and bench like seat with naugahyde covered seat and cushions. There was a sink in the room and a bathroom with a sink, toilet, tub and shower. for a hospital it was luxury. Most of the rooms at Sick Kids are like this. By having private rooms you cut down on the spread of disease. No one knew what was wrong with Melodina at this stage. Also a parent can sleep in the room with the child. It is a great step forward with modern medicine.

I remember when Indira had to fight the hospital staff in Kitchener, dig in her heels and threaten to go to the media to stay with Harmony, our older daughter on the eve of her tonsillectomy. Why the hospital staff would even want a three year old to stay on their own when a parent was willing and able to help out is beyond logic.

When you arrive in the emergency room at the hospital family members are given stickers to identify them as legitimate denizens. You can then come and go without question. To this day I see that sticker on sad and worried faced and I wonder if this is their first time bringing a child to Sick Kids. It reminds me that for each and every parent in the hospital the unknown experience they are facing is likely the most frightening and stressful time of their lives. If I see that sticker on a body attached to a particularly stressed and sometime crying person I will often, with gentle caution, stop and talk. I enquire about their child and try to reassure the parent, sister, brother, grandparent, aunt or uncle that the doctor and nurses at Sick Kids are among the best in the world that that Sick Kids is "medicine the way medicine should be practiced."

Sleep is a misnomer. By 2:30 am Indira was in the hotel and I was drifting off to sleep on the bench near Melodina's bed. I had a fitted sheet over the foam cushion seat of the bench. I had two sheets - called blankets at Sick Kids - and I had a plastic coated pillow. At 3:00 I was sitting up talking to a staff doctor. I don't remember her name. She was a haematologist, a specialist in diseases of the blood.

The doctor questioned me as to Melodina's recent symptoms and activities for over two hours. I'm not sure if she believed me. We went over Mel's story in detail three times. It was after 5:00am when the haematologist left the room. I slowly drifted off to sleep and shortly after 7:00 am the day nurse was shuffling in and out of the room. By eight o'clock the public address system was active, calling nurses and doctors to attend the various rooms. You never get a good night's sleep in the hospital.