NICU

fridays are tough.  always.  you hit the end of the week, and all of everything that you tried to push-off all week long seems to start crashing down around you at about 3:30pm . . .

i left work as the sky was turning that beautiful dusky grey blue-black color.  i needed to stop at a patients' house to drop something off and then i was going home.  to rest.

i am home, on the phone and someone is trying to call in. . . and it is someone from work.  i am told: a woman, who is young, and speaks no english and who had a premature baby earlier this week is home in pain with a fever.  she won't go to the hospital because she doesn't speak any english. . . is there anything that i can do?

i say, "no, there is nothing that i can do. it is dark and i have already worked more than 40 hours this week.  i am tired.  i haven't eaten dinner.  i'm sorry. she'll go if she needs to."  and i sat down to eat.

about 4 bites in, all the memories of all the moms in the NICU that i worked came flooding back.  women who spoke english and felt helpless and abandoned when their baby was taken from them and placed in an incubated, isolated place.  i can't imagine adding the language barrier.

i call work.  i say that i will take her to the hospital.  it's dangerous.  i don't speak her language.  i am there in a 'middle capacity'. . . as a support but with the knowledge and license to act.  she looks terrible when i pick her and her partner up.

we get to the hospital and her pain just increases and increases as the minutes tick by.  and as i watch her, i am not convinced that the source of her pain is her uterus. . . she has pain in her uterus. . . but i think her heart is broken.  

oh the kind, demeaning doctors that keep coming in, acting as if they know things when they are just mostly guessing and not really listening.  at what point in their education were all of these residents instructed to not listen? . . . i am thankful for my medical experiences. . . i have learned the lingo and a way to semi-efficiently navigate the system (regarding maternal-child health).  

once her pain is under control. . . i start to talk about her baby.  i ask if she has pictures. no.  has she spoken to anyone today about how her baby is doing.  no.  there is no way to do this with the language barrier.  has the baby seen his dad today?  no.  i start to emphasize the importance of their presence. . . the need for their baby to hear their voices, to smell them, to feel their hands.  and her eyes light up and she says, 'yes, you think that too.'  do want the baby's dad to go and see the baby?  'yes', she says.

and we go up. . . up to a place so familiar to me.  the darkness, the late-night hush, the vigilance of the nurses, the control, the beeping of the monitors, the respirators, the size of human body less than your hand . . . and a dad weeping.  they never do it in front of their partners.  in all the time i worked in the NICU, when a mom and dad stood there together, she cried and he didn't.  but, frequently, when you stood next to a dad . . . alone and quiet, no partner near. . . the tears flow.  and it is so painful to experience that i am glad they don't do it in front of their wounded partner.

somehow, this woman went home from a major surgery resulting in a very young, sick baby, with the impression that she couldn't help.  the most important person in her whole life was just removed from her  without a plan in place for how to stay connected.

there has to be a better way than this.