Monday through Friday I drive to Boston for my 2:15 appointment for radiation. When I arrive in the bowels of Brigham and Women's hospital at lower level 2, I run my card with a bar code through the scanner to let the radiologist know I have arrived for my treatment. Next I check a computer screen that shows if the radiation dispensing machine is running on time or has a delay. Most times the display reports that that there is a 30 to 45 minute delay and that I will be spending some quality time in the radiation waiting room.
As I have mentioned in previous posts, patience is not a strong skill of mine. In addition the radiation waiting room is small, tends to be crowded and is usually full of family drama and conflict from other anxious patients and their anxious family members. Ironically learning what causes the delays in the radiation machine appointments has gone a long way towards helping me learn to be more patient during the past two weeks of treatment.
The reason for the delays in the radiation machines is that clients with appointments have their appointments delayed by children under three years old who need radiation treatment. The radiation machine staff explained to me that if a child is under three they need to be anesthetized before they can be put on the radiation table for fear that they will move and that the radiation will be delivered to the wrong area of the body. The anesthesia is administered in a different location in the hospital, so the radiation staff is left to adapt to the schedules of the anaesthesiologists and when they are able to get to anaesthetise the child. The anaesthesiologists are not concerned that I had a 2:15 appointment scheduled that day.
You can tell when the anaesthesia children are coming through because a hospital bed pushed by a hospital staffer rushes through the waiting area. You get a glimpse of a small bald headed child lying in a large hospital bed.with a mask over their face. There is usually a worried looking parent following the hospital bed who accompanies the child to the radiation room.
Seeing these children go by, I can't help but think of my two daughters and the scare we had with Hannah and her headaches two years ago. We took Hannah to Children's Hospital because she kept having daily headaches. Luckily the neurologists did not find anything wrong with her and told us the headaches were caused by stress. We later learned by changing her eating habits that the headaches were caused by an allergy to gluten. But what if it had been something as unthinkable as a brain tumor causing her headaches? If it had been a tumor causing her headaches, Hannah would probably have used the same radiation machine I am since this machine specializes in administering radiation to the head.
When I arrive at the radiation waiting room tomorrow I will still be disappointed if the machine has a long wait, knowing I'll get stuck in traffic on the way home. But I will not be annoyed, irritated or be impatient, because I know that my children are healthy and are happy at home doing their homework, watching TV, playing on the computer or outside enjoying the Fall weather with their friends. And I know that somewhere in this hospital a small child is being administered anaesthesia because it is time for them to have radiation treatment that they are way to young to have to be going through.
No comments:
Post a Comment