#pctu

The bay (what they call Ollie's unit) has been closed for a while and it looks like they're just starting a procedure so I won't be able to go back to his room for at least another hour. They close the bay and send visitors and parents out when a patient is having a procedure done that requires a sterile environment. So I'm going to take this time to get Ollie's website together.

It's very easy to feel frustrated and angry when they close the bay and you can't get back to see your kid. I get it. Josh and I have both been there, as have his grandparents who come to see him often. But then it's the day your child is the one having the procedure done, and you're sitting in the waiting room wringing your hands and pacing the short space between the coffee table and the arm chair, and you overhear other family and visitors in the waiting room complaining, and suddenly you freeze. You listen for a minute while they whine about the bay being closed for so long, insisting that it must be closed every other day, swearing about how inconvenient it is, and "how dare they" and "what are they doing anyway?"

And it takes all your strength not to hiss at them, "That's MY son in there! Getting stitched up/being put on ECMO/being taken off ECMO/getting chest tubes put in! That's MY son whose life could be threatened by the tiniest germ that YOU could track in on YOUR shoes/clothes/breath! THAT is what they are doing!"

Then you compose yourself; furiously type an angry text about it to your mother in law with your thumbs, take a deep breath, read her encouraging response, hope the frustrations and pain of the other parents is made better somehow, and go back to pacing.