STORYTIME TAPESTRY

The Newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness throughout the world

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Special Treat ??“ Debra Shiveley

Oct 14, 2005? 

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Courage Smells Like a Hospital

Debra Shiveley

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I walk into Children??™s Hospital holding the hand of my eight-year-old son.?  He is terrified.?  He has had numerous operations, but this is the first one he has faced with some idea of what is happening.

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He is trembling.

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Minutes seem like hours.?  They test his oxygen level, take his blood pressure, ask a million questions.?  I have kept as much of this as possible from him but he senses my distress.?  I have told him that he will have an operation;?  I will not lie to him, but he intuits that I haven??™t given him the entire story.

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He clings to me.

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The smell is all pervasive.?  It is an antiseptic smell, an almost ???no smell.????  Cleaning fluids, anesthesia, rubbing alcohol all mixed into one, undefinable smell.?  It almost hurts to breathe it in, like too clean air invading your lungs, leaving them empty.? ?  I know my son will remember it.?  In future, something will trigger the memory of it and he will relive the terror of today.

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They take us to pre op.?  Here the smell is more definable.?  Sharp, astringent, like sandpaper as it rakes past your nostrils.

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My son looks at me and his eyes well with unshed tears.?  He knows that this is one of the ???biggies.????  They will take a large portion of bone from his tiny hip and replace the missing bone in his upper gum line, the alveolar ridge.?  He senses that it will hurt.? 

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He is afraid.

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The smell is starting to make me ill.?  Or is it fear??  Once again I will be turning my baby, my little love, over to strangers.

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They will cut.
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The anaesthesiologist arrives and takes my son??™s hand.?  Chris looks at me with those glistening tear filled eyes and he smiles.?  His back straightens.?  His chin lifts and just as those big, double doors swing shut, Chris raises his hand in sign.?  ???I love you.???

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Debra Shiveley

merribuck@merribuck.com

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About Me:

Hello, my? name is Debra Welch.?  I'm 52 and the very proud mother of a soon-to-be 13? year old son named Christopher.

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Christopher is adopted, so I have some writings on the subject, and he was? born with a moderately severe unilateral clefting of the lip, gums and hard and soft palates.?  He is beautiful!?  Chris also has learning differences:? ADD, Dysgraphia, and Executive Function and? Working Memory Deficit.?  He is the joy of our lives.

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I have been writing since age nine.?  My father came to visit and plopped down a pad of paper and a pencil.?  "Write me a poem," he said "and call it 'Poetry Problems.'"?  This is when I learned that my father and great grandfather both wrote poetry.?  I was being tested.

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I have just finished co-authoring a novel with my cousin titled "Jesus Gandhi Jetta Mae Adams," a murder mystery set in Columbus, Ohio and am starting my second novel.

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