Broken Promises

Chapter 10 - You Are Given a Chance

I was called into my research mentor's office to have a meeting one afternoon. I was supposed to give a presentation on my graduate research as part of my dissertation process. I had scheduled it, but apparently no one had formally announced it from the school's side. My research group chair called it off because he was upset that I had not known the school forgot to advertise it.

He informed me that my current life's circumstances were inconvenient for him. He gave me a lecture about how I was not doing what I had needed to be doing. It struck me as a little off, since I understood that he had a scare when his son was born.

Maybe he was right. My priorities were not school. They could not be. I had started out being a great student. I was doing research my first year while others were still taking classes. I had even published a few times in prestigious journals. Until everything went to chaos, I was on track for a career as a biochemistry researcher.

It is one of those things that is easy to see both sides of, although I would have appreciated some kind of sympathy. I was a good student with potential who was in a life-changing circumstance doing the best I could to keep afloat. I was not some slacker. Unfortunately, there was no system in place for students who needed help like there was for employees. When I checked in with school support services, I was simply told there was nothing that could be done.

I was being lectured, someone from my research group came running to the office to tell me that your mom was on the phone, and you had stopped breathing. I think this was the first time my mentor, and others in the lab, understood what was really going on. I spoke to your mom on the phone briefly and headed to the hospital. I told them to tell my mentor I had to leave.

Later that night I wrote him a lengthy email explaining that this was my life now. Keeping you alive was my priority, and school would never come before that. He never spoke to me about that email, but the conversation we had before did not happen again. The tenor in the lab also seemed to change. It never went back to normal, but they at least accepted that this was something serious, and they were not the priority.

It made me sad that no one bothered to check on you or me, someone they had called a friend. Unless my memory fails me, no one at the school ever called. The department secretary saw me the first time I came back to the school and pulled me into a private area to tell me she was praying for you. It is disturbing how little we really matter to most people.

Nurses triaged you at a nearby hospital to stabilize you. We clarified that you would not be going back to the first hospital and told them why. Since both facilities were close, it was easy getting them to use the second children's hospital in the area as you were on a ventilator and no longer in imminent distress.

After all the drama with the first children's hospital, we were glad to have you at a new place. We did not really expect any difference, especially since your doctors worked at both facilities. And yet, the difference was night and day. Where the first seemed staffed by older caregivers set in their ways, this one was a teaching hospital with younger staff and students open to giving you a chance. Frankly, it felt like this new hospital with student and younger caregivers still had hope. It was palpably different, no longer a war zone.

We had one physician in charge of the PICU who sat me down to talk about what happened at the last hospital. She had heard from others we had had a lot of issues. She listened and seemed shocked at the previous treatment. She voiced that we would not have that problem there. She said she would respect our wishes as we could voice the diagnosis and prognosis. She then listed what we needed to do if we planned on continuing your care. You needed a breathing tube and a feeding tube. If we were serious about continuing care, this was not optional. Your airway was fragile, and there was a real risk that without a tracheotomy there would come a time when they could not intubate you because of scar tissue, swelling, or other issues. This had almost happened at the hospital that day when we brought you in, and it remained an ongoing concern. The feeding tube would replace the one that went in through your mouth and instead directly feed into your stomach. It would be much safer and in no danger of slipping out and risking aspiration into the lungs. Both were terrifying to think about, but terrifying was now a normal part of life.