Intensive Experience

We’ve been hanging around in the High/Intensive Care unit for a day and a half now. I have to say that it’s an experience that I’d rather not repeat. The atmosphere in the place is so incredibly grim and intense that just being here weighs heavily on one’s soul. Of course, what should one expect from a department that looks after critically sick children? But the answer to that question is theory, which in this case is quite some distance removed from reality.

It’s difficult to describe the reality. On the one hand the department is extremely “gently” presented, lots of light, lots of space, pictures and toys around the place. The staff are friendly and professional. Even the equipment and patient bays are not particularly intimidating. In fact there’s nothing physically grim about the place at all. Also, in general the bedside parents are only as worried as one would expect (ie terrified). But they’re coping, as are we.

So why is it that I experience such a grim, intense atmosphere? I find it very difficult to say, actually. Strangely enough, I don’t think it has to do actuality of the unit. I think it’s more to do with the fact that in this department one is only separated from the potential death of a child by a very thin veil. And one can feel it all around. When you’re here you’re close to life shattering, irreversible consequences.

Here, I feel optimistic about Kay for some reason. One nurse said to Kay that she wasn’t used to having to deal with patients that talk back or want to get out of bed to pee and I think that’s what makes me feel optimistic. But that’s not to say I don’t have my worries, of course I do. And in any other place my worries would be off scale. But everything is relative – the last months have taught me this in the most explicit terms - and here there are worse things. Are you starting to understand what I mean?

Yesterday a family lost a child in the IC. The McD parents room was crowded with grieving relatives and again today. With the greatest respect for this family, as the parent of a child lying the HC/IC I found it extremely difficult to be exposed to their grief. Kay is in an isolation room in the HC unit, a small space full of equipment and no windows. Kay wants the light kept down so we’re sitting in a box in permanent twilight. Every now and again it is necessary to have a break, get some air, lighten one’s soul. But every time I step out into the McD room, I’m again confronted with this family’s pain and I end up – literally – hurrying back to Kay’s bedside. I’d rather sit here in the gloom watching Kay’s monitors and worrying about her than be confronted with what is on the other side of the oh-so-thin veil.