E-Male
Meaningful Relationships

My wife Jill and I have developed a relationship with doctors. I mean a relationship where the power rests in one hand and the decision in another. It’s a doomed imbalance, particularly when entered into by two parents who, once upon a time, knew as much about premature babies and neonatology as an infant knows about being a grown-up.

Jill and I are in our second relationship with doctors. It’s better than the first, which dragged from about 15 months to last January. That relationship we entered blind, as the buds came out and the birds twittered like doctors’ promises: "The lungs develop fast;" "We’ll take him out and make him grow." By last Halloween, however, the promises had shriveled to mere comments from the medical staff, such as "You’ve been crying for five months!" "I dunno. Maybe he’s just biologically limited."

By the end of that one, everything had cooled to the woeful acceptance of "All we can do is support him through this..."

Seeking a fresh start and second opinions, Jill and I saw other doctors. Not long after, we found our current hospital: clean, high-tech, nice carpet, a staff that asked questions and bedside furniture that accommodated our fatigue. The pulmonologist said wise things like, "It’s not a matter of a good hand. It’s a matter of a bad hand played well." These people were attractive.

We transferred Alex, and the new docs got the breathing vent out of his throat in five days. He might come in for some stomach surgery later, they said, but they got the vent out in five days!

One doctor gave him baby steps toward breathing, and then a gruff Southern doctor came in and plowed Alex onto cannula. All that time, they seemed to be reading our minds. When Alex’s IV popped out, for example, he had just two days to go on intravenous antibiotics. But we didn’t want an IV; he was beginning to do cute things with his hand, like pull out his air tube.

I had moved to ask the doctor if they could please just give Alex a shot of antibiotics and not go fishing for a fresh vein. I was about to open my mouth when the doctor turned to me and said, "We’re not going to do another IV. We’ll just give him a shot tonight and tomorrow night."

That was the kind of thing they were always doing for us. When Alex couldn’t keep his blood-oxygen level up while on cannula, the doctor emphasized that the trying was no failure. Another doctor had to help stick Alex three times for a blood sample and kept saying, "We’re sorry, we’re sorry." Another doctor once got on the phone with Jill and said, "I was told that if I didn’t speak with you tonight, I’d hear about it tomorrow morning!"

Silly phone talk.

The bloom began to fade when the docs watched Alex spit up and decided he had Reflux. For that, they said, Alex must have surgery. Yet, because his lungs remain fragile, they could not test for Reflux. So trust them.

Which we were prepared to do, except they stopped meeting our eyes. They were in a hurry when we were around. They came in at odd hours. We understood a dwindling amount of what they were saying and how they acted.

They couldn’t allow a barium swallow or a PH probe, but when we held out they finally did agree to the latter as if giving in and going to our cousin’s wedding. But they did the test in a half-hearted way, as if going to the reception too but just sitting in the corner getting quietly drunk. When the probe report came back with the results they expected, they seemed to screech Told ya! and whirl away to whetstone the scalpels.