I was exhausted, hungry, and overwhelmed with all the decisions to make about Really Big Things. I thought I'd be done by then, but I had to take Elli to One More Thing -- x-ray. The doctor is very concerned that her hip is about to pop out of its socket and that the socket might never be the same.
X-ray is almost as far from her clinic appointment as you can get. It was late, after most doctors in private practice stop seeing patients, so the little waiting area was packed and I couldn't even sit down for the first 15 minutes of our wait. I braced myself along the wall of the hall and tried to get comfortable. It was 5pm and all I could think about is how horrible the traffic will be, how long it will take to get home, how I had really really really wanted to be on the road by 4:30 so I could pick up the other kids from my friends' house, race home, throw dinner together, race kids through showers, dump them into bed, and then crawl into my bed to lick my wounds until sweet slept stole me away.
Poor poor pitiful me.
Then something happened. I looked around and actually saw the people waiting with me.
Most of them had come from the Emergency Department.
There was a mom holding a little boy, probably 3 or 4 years old, who was totally limp -- sound asleep. He was yellow from head to toe, clearly extremely ill with liver failure. They took him to ultrasound when they saw the wait for x-ray was so long.
There was a teen from another country who couldn't understand English and had an interpreter with her.
Rolling by me down the hall from the trauma bay or the elevators leading down from the PICU went a girl who looked to be about 10. She had cuts all over her face, like she'd been in a car accident. She was unconscious, accompanied about about 20 different IV meds on two poles and about 10 medical personnel. They were headed to the CT scanner. Head and/or internal injuries was my guess.
Rolling out of the x-ray room came a young man on a bed, also unconscious. He was being fed through a g-tube. I got the sense that he had been in the hospital for a long time.
Suddenly my whole attitude melted. I would get to head home after the x-ray. I would sleep in my own bed that night, and each of my children would be in their beds in their rooms. We would eat home-cooked food... at home.
Instead of feeling sorry for myself for one really long day, I needed to thank God for the blessings of that day. I needed to pray for the hurting people around me. And I needed to try to be a bright spot in the shift of those x-ray technicians who see so many sad, angry, frightened, sick people every day.
