Our Stay at the Hospital--Part 2

"We are having a hard time finding you a room," said our international clinic helper, Rose.  "You can either have an expensive, private room on the VIP floor or you can have a semi-private room in the international clinic for a much cheaper price."  I inquire a bit more about the semi-private room and Rose responds, "The other person in the room has a mental problem.  She sometimes gets very angry. I can't really talk about it because of privacy issues.  It's just a mental problem."  At this point, we were going on hour four in the ER so we just wanted a room.  We hesitated with the mental problem but thought it didn't sound contagious so we'd be alright.

We show up to our room to see Everett's name tag (notice the spelling).

 We walk into our room and see an African American women in her early 30's who seemed quite pleasant.  "How are you all doing? Oh, I'm so sorry your baby is sick. I'll pray for your baby.  Do you all want the TV off? If it's bothering you we can turn it off."  Upon first impression I thought, this won't be bad at all!

This is Tom doing a breathing treatment in our room. The roomy is behind Tom behind the curtain.

Then 30-45 minutes later we had another conversation with E's roomy that went something like this, "Oh, I'm so sorry your baby is sick. I'll pray for your baby.  Do you all want the TV off? If it's bothering you we can turn it off."  Tom and I respond kindly then turn and give each other this look of, "Didn't we just have this conversation?"  Luckily our roomy's friend was there and she mouthed to us that she has a short term memory problem.  It all began to make sense....

Other repeated phrases we heard over the next day were to Tom, "Wow! You're really tall? How tall are you?" And to her friend, "Did you eat my lunchables? Why didn't you give me a hot pocket?"  And our personal favorite that was said to all in the room, "You may not want to go in there for a while...." which she would say before and/or after leaving the bathroom.

So after having the same conversations repeatedly we found out we were being transfered to single room in the peds ward! Sweeeeet!!!!! It was great....while it lasted. We found out after a day of the private room we were being moved to another semi-private room because of our insurance (actually it was because of a miscommunication).  We were okay with the move until we walked into the germ factory that was the shared room! E's second roomy was a 4 year old boy that coughed like a seal was dying inside of him.  I instantly went to the nurses and said I wasn't comfortable sharing a room with someone else that could be contagious with something.  They said that so far the roomy tested negative for 2 of the 3 virus tests and so did Everett, so since they were in the same situation they thought it would be okay.  What?!!! That makes no sense. I protested. I told them I didn't want my child with someone that potentially has a virus while he was already sick.  But there was nothing that could be done.  They already moved us and there was no extra space.  So we pulled our curtain around E's bed and washed our hands incessantly.

Here's Everett in his second shared space. 

Aside from being a potential germ factory, this shared room was also interesting because the little boy would cry, throw tantrums, and worse of all have night terrors.  He woke up a few times throughout the night SCREAMING for his mom.  It was intense.

Fortunately after our protests from the day before they moved some folks around so E could move back to the private room.  This was such a blessing! Right after they told us about our move to a private room the doctor came to tell us that, ironically, Everett had a virus (RSV) while the 4 year old roomy did not test positive for any viruses. She told us this with a little chuckle.

Pretty much everyday we were at the hospital we were re-located, which made our stay that much more adventurous.  With each move the Korean cleaning staff would come in and hurriedly pack up all of our stuff and force us out of the room, whether we were ready or not!  My favorite moment with the cleaning staff was when one lady took our bar of soap out of the bathroom, grabbed it with her plastic glove on, and then took off the glove around the soap so the soap was contained in her glove.  I was a bit weirded out by it, but it was soap after all.

Despite our "adventures" in moving I still feel like Everett received quality care and he constantly had people checking on him to make sure he was progressing.

Next up in our series: awkward cultural exchanges