Family Chuckle-- Times in the hospital are few, memorable

When I visited a friend in the hospital recently, it brought back memories of our family's various incarcerations in that big, sterile bed-and-breakfast facility. Although you never really choose to be on the register, at some point most people find themselves lounging in a bed with rails, wearing a peep-show nightshirt that has to be held together in the back by a clenched fist for common decency.

Our family was usually healthy, so we didn't spend as much time there as many families do.

The trips to have a baby don't really count ... they were more like mini-vacations. This was in the golden past when you and the baby stayed at least three days. There was some quickly forgotten pain, then the bliss of having your meals served in bed and an alcohol back-rub before sleep. It was the calm before the storm of life began again.

The tonsillectomies don't really count either, although the three of our kids who had them would beg to differ. They were done pretty routinely, just a part of childhood back then ... a horrible sore throat balanced out by new "quiet" toys and stuffed animals, Popsicles in wintertime and ice cream.

Shawn's stay with diarrhea at 14 months was brief but noteworthy. He suffered severe separation trauma from his blanky until I hurried home to wash and dry it and slip it through the crib bars, at which time he buried his face in it like he'd never let it out of sight again.

The noteworthy part of the stay was that he quickly and firmly weaned himself from his bottle. He'd had IV antibiotic in the hospital, and I was instructed to put it in his formula when he came home. He took a couple of strong drags on the bottle, stared at it in disbelief, and threw it over the side of his crib. Never trusted me enough to try another one.

Katy was seriously ill at the age of 5 with some exotic illness she evidently contracted at Disneyland or on the plane, and was in the hospital for 11 days. All the testing and procedures were horrible. The hardest time was one evening when the vespers service came over the PA system at St. Elizabeth Hospital. Her eyes widened in her gaunt little face and she whispered, "Am I going to die?" I've wondered ever since how a tiny child with no knowledge of death or familiarity with religious rituals could associate that litany with dying.

Our next medical trauma came when 19-year-old Luanne's Volkswagen bug challenged a logging truck on a treacherous piece of black ice. The truck won, of course. Luckily it was stopped (and she was trying to do the same) or the crash could have been much worse. As it was, she broke three vertebrae in her neck.

After the shock and fear, the thing I remember most about that hospital stay is the time when she was feeling bored and low, and we decided it'd be fun to set up the Scrabble board and extend my visit. I called home to ask Russ if he could take care of dinner for the rest of the family. When he began doubtfully, "Well, I guess ..." I released days of bottled tension in just a few seconds. I don't know what he fed the family, but nobody complained when I got home.

Along in there somewhere I had ulcer surgery. Nothing exciting happened, except I got a really beautiful plant from our teenage son. For some reason Matt felt responsible for the ulcer.

Russ' hip surgeries were no walk in the park, as anyone who's had one knows, but it was his kidney surgery, prior to those, that had us all learning to pray.

His spiraling blood pressure led to the discovery that one kidney was nonfunctioning, and the blood vessel leading to the other one had become inadequate. His kidney was moved in order to be connected to a good vessel. It was touch and go for awhile, and taught us about those "for better, for worse, in sickness and in health" vows. After the first couple of 10-minute-limit visits in intensive care after surgery, the nurse asked me to come in and stay. "He rests more quietly when you're here," she explained.

We're grateful for his life, even if he does have a strange map of scars to explain to a new physician.

The days our son Matt spent in the hospital offer not even the slightest hint of a chuckle, but after enough years have passed to distance the pain, there are memories to cherish ... the last touch of a hand, a kiss on a fevered cheek, words of farewell as clear as though spoken yesterday. And I will always remember that at the end, the nurse recording the times and vital signs had tears running into her mask. She had seen death many times, but she still grieved to see parents tell a beloved son goodbye.

We're lucky that even with four kids, we didn't spend a lot of time in hospitals. And we're thankful that a caring heart stood with us in the event for which a happy ending wasn't possible. Sometimes, that's all you can hope for.

* Donna Scofield is a freelance writer whose articles, columns and short fiction stories have appeared in numerous national and regional magazines. The longtime Yakima resident is retired after working as a secretary and office manager in Yakima School District elementary schools. She has raised two sons and two daughters.