The hospital heroes

Over the last week, my son spent 5 nights/6 days in hospital for a recurring problem. I spent every night next to him in a crappy single person sofa bed with missing springs (somehow it held my weight), so with an average bed, other kids being wheeled in and wheeled out throughout the night of our 4-bed room, and the delights of newborns crying around us, we were both pretty exhausted after our stay. So while the nurses always get a wrap for how amazing they are, and they are, there are many other heroes situated in the children's ward of a hospital each and every day.

Firstly, there are the children. In our 5 night stay, we had children ranging from 6 days old to 16 years old. The 16 year old had coeliac's disease plus juvenile diabetes and had a sugar overdose. He would have Turret's like fits in the middle of the night screaming out 'f*&*' to our amusement, but not necessarily ideal for the young ears around us. There was a 4 year old girl who found out she had cancer in our stay. I saw her mum crying crouched down in the hallway with nurses, counsellors and family members surrounding her trying to console her. We had a 5 year old cerebral palsy boy who was very sweet, patient and able to just put up with everything he went through - from being feed through a hole in his stomach, to wearing nappies and being prodded and poked for the numerous amounts of tests he needed. We had several children with asthma come and go, a 9 week old who wasn't putting on weight yet was struck down with severe bronchillitis so she sounded like she was always struggling to breathe, and a newborn with jaundice that wasn't subsiding. It really made you feel that the struggle my son goes through every day, and has done for the majority of his years, is nothing compared to these other children, especially those who have to live with their illness for the rest of their days.

We are lucky that what my son has is fixable, but it will take a while, through a process of elimination to see exactly what needs to be done. But so many others have incurable diseases, illnesses or dietary concerns that they have to adjust their lives accordingly.

But the real heroes are the parents who are there for the children day in day out and don't have a selfless bone in their body. The siblings of these children who allow their parents to be there day in day out for their sick brother or sister, and miss out on being a normal kid too. They are the real heroes, as they watch their friends do all the things they want to do, but their parents can't give them the time. There was one parent there who lived in Tasmania and travelled sometimes 26 times a year to Melbourne to get the help needed for her son. She leaves 3 other children in the care of her parents while she is over in Melbourne, but on top of it all, her husband came down with terminal lung cancer and recently had a knee replacement, so she's literally doing it all on her own… and she's only 34 years old. Truly, the courage she has is just extraordinary to keep going, smile and laugh whilst going through such tragedy, at what every day brings her.

This was my first time every to experience and observe the goings-on at a hospital, especially a children's ward. Doctors come and go, and I seriously thought we would see much more of the doctors in the ward, but we didn't. Most kids were lucky to see a doctor once a day, while the nurses attended to their every need. We were lucky to have charitable organisations and volunteers at the Ronald McDonald Family Room which provided a refuge for families to talk in private, a dining area and kitchen to cook a proper meal, showers and laundry facilities for those with no place to do the everyday things they needed. We also had a Starlight Room run by the Starlight Foundation for the sick children to play video games and interact with other sick children, just to feel normal. We had play therapy consultants who brought around show bags of goodies and other toys for the children who were bed-ridden. All these things made our hospital stay bearable, while children with severely disfigured faces and bodies, or children with tubes coming out of every cavity in their body, just broke your heart and made you realise how extremely lucky we are to have almost perfect kids.