"I don't want Mummy to stay!"
A remark from metamorphosa in response to my last entry, plus another conversation today, have prompted me to dig out this article my mother wrote in 1965 about accompanying me to hospital for an operation at a time when this was not normal practice for parents. (This was one reason why she decided to go for private healthcare in this case, an option not available to many of our contemporaries. I still have the invoice; it was for thirty-eight guineas.)
I wasn't called Kalypso in the original article, because it was eighteen years before I first adopted that name, but it seemed simpler to use it here.
To hospital with Kalypso, from The Guardian, November 12, 1965
Kalypso was three and a half when our doctor suggested that her tonsils should be removed. My mind turned to problems of time, place and convenience to the rest of the family, and I wondered whether I would be able to put into practice those principles of mother care which, through a 5s subscription, I had supported and read about in the last two years. I was aware that a fairly large question mark hung over this last: even those hospitals who now open their doors fairly freely to parents of young children are still inclined to discourage visitors to ENT patients.
I chose a specialist whom I knew not to be averse to mother care principles and we saw her privately. The case turned out to be uncomplicated and not urgent. I could have waited for a bed in a hospital under the National Health scheme. For domestic reasons I chose speed and certainty of dates, and to have the operation performed in a private hospital. Only then did I say that I wished to be with my child before and after the operation. To my surprise I was offered a bed beside my daughter's for the full time she would be in hospital. This I accepted.
So far, so good. But I had reckoned without Kalypso. Informed and in rude health after her summer holiday, she set off for the hospital stating firmly and repeatedly: "I don't want you to stay in hospital with me, Mummy. I want to sleep with the children and the nurses." I visualised the hospital scene in reverse. Instead of I don't want Mummy to go, I don't want Mummy to stay! Either the glamour of our room with twin beds or the uninterested, biggish boys, who alone occupied an otherwise temptingly furnished children's ward, pacified her. She put up with me. In the face of this confident child, the nurses, though politely accepting, clearly thought the exercise was pointless. I began having doubts myself. Was this whole business for the benefit of the mother? But how could I be sure she would have behaved like this without me?
On the morning of the operation Kalypso woke at seven, all agog: "Where are the nurses?" They duly arrived with robe and pre-med. She waited, quiet now but serene. On the trolley she kissed me goodbye and set off waving gaily. I wandered away intending to return in the specified half hour, but before that I was recalled by sister: "Your little one is back and I fear she will open her eyes before you are there." Greatly touched I hastened back to the outraged screams of my youngest. Her eyes were not open, but her face was contorted with unconscious pain and rage. Traces of blood in the nose. Nothing more. For an hour I rocked the bed and spoke quietly whenever she came to.
The surgeon looked in. "She'll break your heart all day complaining and crying," was her prediction. I steeled myself for what was to come. It never did. She slept peacefully till 2 30. Then she woke to full consciousness and realised the horrid hurt in her throat. Each time her face crumpled, I explained that it would hurt more if she cried and talked distractingly. This kept her quiet. When father and sister arrived she was tearful but easily pacified. After their visit a favourite nurse came to try her pulse and temperature. Kalypso resisted totally. The attempt abandoned (with sister's permission), all was again peace. From 7 p.m. she slept soundly until 7 a.m. "Where's breakfast?" she asked, submitting without a murmur to the temperature and pulse routine. Her ordeal was over.
But not my usefulness. For a day and a half I was fully occupied and able to absorb into our play a ten-year-old post-appendix case. This released the nursing staff for more important duties, and kept my own patient from becoming a fractious convalescent.
Would Kalypso's experience have run the same course had I not been there? There is no means of telling. Certainly there were none of the upsets often associated with the period after being in hospital. The staff seemed gratified at the amount of sleep and the absence of crying, so beneficial to recovery from this operation. And I know what satisfaction I derived from knowing what was going on, and sharing, as any mother longs to, the suffering, if suffering there has to be, of her child.
[Note: I can explain the reason for my outraged screams, which my mother doesn't seem to have understood. I woke up after the operation to find I couldn't speak, which I hadn't been warned about beforehand. So I was extremely alarmed until my voice returned to normal and I was able to communicate again. In the meantime, I used it in the form which still seemed to be possible, which was screaming.]
Also posted on Dreamwidth, with
comments.
I wasn't called Kalypso in the original article, because it was eighteen years before I first adopted that name, but it seemed simpler to use it here.
To hospital with Kalypso, from The Guardian, November 12, 1965
Kalypso was three and a half when our doctor suggested that her tonsils should be removed. My mind turned to problems of time, place and convenience to the rest of the family, and I wondered whether I would be able to put into practice those principles of mother care which, through a 5s subscription, I had supported and read about in the last two years. I was aware that a fairly large question mark hung over this last: even those hospitals who now open their doors fairly freely to parents of young children are still inclined to discourage visitors to ENT patients.
I chose a specialist whom I knew not to be averse to mother care principles and we saw her privately. The case turned out to be uncomplicated and not urgent. I could have waited for a bed in a hospital under the National Health scheme. For domestic reasons I chose speed and certainty of dates, and to have the operation performed in a private hospital. Only then did I say that I wished to be with my child before and after the operation. To my surprise I was offered a bed beside my daughter's for the full time she would be in hospital. This I accepted.
So far, so good. But I had reckoned without Kalypso. Informed and in rude health after her summer holiday, she set off for the hospital stating firmly and repeatedly: "I don't want you to stay in hospital with me, Mummy. I want to sleep with the children and the nurses." I visualised the hospital scene in reverse. Instead of I don't want Mummy to go, I don't want Mummy to stay! Either the glamour of our room with twin beds or the uninterested, biggish boys, who alone occupied an otherwise temptingly furnished children's ward, pacified her. She put up with me. In the face of this confident child, the nurses, though politely accepting, clearly thought the exercise was pointless. I began having doubts myself. Was this whole business for the benefit of the mother? But how could I be sure she would have behaved like this without me?
On the morning of the operation Kalypso woke at seven, all agog: "Where are the nurses?" They duly arrived with robe and pre-med. She waited, quiet now but serene. On the trolley she kissed me goodbye and set off waving gaily. I wandered away intending to return in the specified half hour, but before that I was recalled by sister: "Your little one is back and I fear she will open her eyes before you are there." Greatly touched I hastened back to the outraged screams of my youngest. Her eyes were not open, but her face was contorted with unconscious pain and rage. Traces of blood in the nose. Nothing more. For an hour I rocked the bed and spoke quietly whenever she came to.
The surgeon looked in. "She'll break your heart all day complaining and crying," was her prediction. I steeled myself for what was to come. It never did. She slept peacefully till 2 30. Then she woke to full consciousness and realised the horrid hurt in her throat. Each time her face crumpled, I explained that it would hurt more if she cried and talked distractingly. This kept her quiet. When father and sister arrived she was tearful but easily pacified. After their visit a favourite nurse came to try her pulse and temperature. Kalypso resisted totally. The attempt abandoned (with sister's permission), all was again peace. From 7 p.m. she slept soundly until 7 a.m. "Where's breakfast?" she asked, submitting without a murmur to the temperature and pulse routine. Her ordeal was over.
But not my usefulness. For a day and a half I was fully occupied and able to absorb into our play a ten-year-old post-appendix case. This released the nursing staff for more important duties, and kept my own patient from becoming a fractious convalescent.
Would Kalypso's experience have run the same course had I not been there? There is no means of telling. Certainly there were none of the upsets often associated with the period after being in hospital. The staff seemed gratified at the amount of sleep and the absence of crying, so beneficial to recovery from this operation. And I know what satisfaction I derived from knowing what was going on, and sharing, as any mother longs to, the suffering, if suffering there has to be, of her child.
[Note: I can explain the reason for my outraged screams, which my mother doesn't seem to have understood. I woke up after the operation to find I couldn't speak, which I hadn't been warned about beforehand. So I was extremely alarmed until my voice returned to normal and I was able to communicate again. In the meantime, I used it in the form which still seemed to be possible, which was screaming.]
Also posted on Dreamwidth, with
comments.