I feel the need to say a little something.

[Doc]

We spent my daughter's first Christmas in the hospital with her.  She wasn't breathing very well and needed to be in an oxygen tent thingy with asthma treatment medicine piped in every now and then.  Being that she was old enough (11 months) to be aware and terrified of the whole thing, I stayed in the tent with her.  By the time I got out after 3 days, I saw fog in the corner of my eyes for a full day after that.

One nice thing about being in there around Christmastime is that people really do go out of their way to recognize the kids in there.  She got two anonymous presents- one terrifyingly happy teddy bear that was about twice as big as she was (we called it "scare bear"), and a homemade M&M dispenser that had her name woodburned into it.  It really meant a lot that people would take the time to do stuff like that, even though little Gris was too young to notice or care at the time.

Of course, there are kids that are a lot sicker than she was, and that must be a very trying experience indeed.  3 days is the longest I've ever spent in a hospital, and it was plenty.
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You are a good mom. All that oxygen was a danger to you... Er, I dunno what to say but wanted to say something.

What unnerved me today was the number of single mothers... Seeing a whole family was, well, rare. There were only like three or four whole families out of maybe 60 or so kids. Heartbreaking to me, and down even more from last year.

Some of these kids in here are victims of abuse. Physical abuse. Fathers or mothers that had beaten them. Or starved them. And other kids... There was all the usual suspects. Cancer. AIDS. Diseases of all kinds. There were some kids with no parents... Whatever horrible accident that had disfigured or hashed them had killed their parents. (Or parent, as the numbers seem to indicate)

I made it a point to sit down and speak with the horribly disfigured ones... Kids that were probably going to have to spend their whole lives with some serious scars or some sort of disfiguring mark. Kids are not stupid... And they don't need to always be sheltered. Some times, it's best to sit down and talk with them as equals, and not talk down to them, or treat them as children. Kids hate that. Kids also know when they are being fed a line of happy horse#$%& and just like adults, they don't like it either. It's good to sit down and shoot straight with them. Of course, a lot of the people that talked to them about being disfigured were full of #$%&. People with perfect faces, and perfect teeth, and perfect eyes, and perfect skin, trying to tell them how difficult life might be. Somehow I don't think those kids bought a single word that these perfect looking beautiful people were saying about how hard life was going to be. Frankly, it is of my own opinion that the perfect looking people do more damage to the kids trying to talk about these issues, and that somebody with practical experience, you know, somebody that is actually horribly scarred or disfigured should be having these sorts of chats with the kids and shoot straight with them.

I spent time with all of them. I read them "The Night Before Christmas." We had cookies. Some kids were obviously not in to it... And I reminded them that they were in the hospital for reasons they could not control, but being miserable was something that they did have power over. It's optional. And in their situation, maintaining power over whatever they did have some small say or control over was important. Quite a few kids got it... And attitudes improved considerably. A lot fewer party poopers. There was some concern by a few "child psychology specialists" about me talking to them like adults, but I had these kids in better moods and brought quite a few out of their shells, so some of those guys in labcoats are full of crap. Speak to these kids like idiots... With loud slow voices and carefully pronounced words, treating these kids like they were some moronic hothouse flowers... It really bothered me. These kids are sick. Not deaf or stupid. I can't bloody stand that stupid voice so many of the staff used on the kids. So forced, so canned, so full of crap. And the kids know it too, and it gets on their nerves.

I guess it gets on my nerves that some of these nurses expect these kids to act like kids... And these nurses have this hideous chipper attitude. Damn near impossible to act like a kid when you are hauling along an IV drip along with you as you shuffle down the hallway. Such a cold, clinical, textbook method of dealing with these kids. And it's wrong.

I just realised that I hate these visits. I think I always have, hence the usual bout of heavy drinking that always seemed to follow. I mean, I love the kids... And I love making them feel a little better if I can. I love handing out toys, and gifts, and spending time with them. I love giving them advice. But the staff... The nurses, the doctors, the adults, most of them have got to go. I can't stand those people. I loved being able to sit around with the kids today and talk about Harry Potter and how most of them wanted so much to go out and see "The Goblet of Fire" and they couldn't. One kid remarked he wanted to see it before he died... And he wasn't joking. Quite a few of them wanted to see "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe" too. I very much wanted to pack them all up somehow and take them all out to the movies... I wanted to very badly. So much so that it ached. And it still does. I hate this feeling... Feelings like this drove me to drink. It's not bloody fair. Sure, it will come out on video someday, and they can watch it on the pissy little hospital tv in the rec room... But what about the kids that might not make it that long? And it's not the same, at least not to a kid (Or most adults for that matter) watching a movie on tv that they wanted to see in the theatre. In the theatre, it's huge, it's loud, the sound is better, and there is a certain magic. Somebody needs to set up a theatre right there on the hospital grounds and somehow make arrangements to have kids movies shown there at the hospital theatre.

Some of these kids hated Christmas. It broke my heart. Some of those kids had spent a few Christmases in this hospital... And they have become bitter and hardened. They have come to realise that just about the only time the outside world cares about them is on Christmas... Every other day of the year is the same old grind. It makes me sad to think about this... That some kid actually thought about that.

Reminds me why I have always hated Christmas my self.

I think I have said enough. I have so much more to say but would be accused of rambling.