The Hospital: Our second home

When I first saw the facade of the hospital I was overcome with fear. I tried to calm myself by repeating the mantra that everything would eventually return to normal. Natalia was scheduled to have a biopsy to confirm the provisional diagnosis of Ewing’s sarcoma. It was something she did not want to have done. I hoped that it would be negative, that the doctors were wrong and there was some other explanation of Natalia’s symptoms but I had a bad feeling that I would not leave me.



My recollection of this time is shrouded in a haze, everything touched by the fear and uncertainty I felt at that time. The hospital was very old. As we entered we were dwarfed by the immense rooms crowned by what seemed impossibly high ceilings. I felt small, lost. Inside I felt even smaller, a little girl. I wanted to hide in a corner of one of those grand rooms and surrender to the impulse to cry. I wanted to hide in a hidden recess and disappear from view. Like a 6 year playing in a sand pit, I wanted to bury myself in the sand and imagine that I was elsewhere, far from my present reality. But much as I wanted to escape, I knew that this was not an option. I was a mother here with her sick child and I would have to be strong for the sake of my daughter. I had already learned to put on a strong front for my daughter and I knew that I would continue to play the role for her sake.

We met a nurse who explained what would take place over the course of the treatment. She was warm and friendly. I recall her face, her compassionate smile and welcoming eyes. She gave me real hope because what she said seemed sincere and grounded in true experience. So many people upon hearing the news of my daughter’s diagnosis had told me that it was going to be OK but to me they seemed like they wanted to brush over the subject, something that made them uncomfortable, the subject of cancer and the possibility of death. The nurse we met offered no such false consolation. She spoke in concrete terms of the treatment and how other children undergoing similar procedures had fared well. She told us that we had to be strong and be prepared to constantly fight against the illness What she said was important to me, something that I draw strength from to this day.

I never experienced the question that sometimes people ask when they are faced with the diagnosis of cancer. I never asked “Why my daughter? What had she done to deserve this? “I have never thought this way. It had hardly been two years since my husband’s death and my outlook remained the same. I never questioned my misfortune. I was too caught up in my life and responsibilities to dwell on questions that offered no resolution. I suffered the grief and I looked toward the future. I accepted the reality of life. I had no choice. Great challenges had been thrust in my path. I had to be equal to the task.

I recall the smell of the hospital distinctly. It was a stringent chemical smell that hung in the air. I thought of it as the smell of chemotherapy. I saw children walking by pushing their IV drips. Many were missing their eyebrows and eyelashes, lost as a side effect of the chemotherapy. When they looked my way their eyes were brought into dramatic relief unadorned by the softening effect of hair. It was the normality of the situation that stunned me. There were children who looked at us with inquisitive stares. It was no different I realize from when a child arrives at a new school in midterm and is greeted everywhere by curiosity from his or her peers.

I saw a doctor speaking with a colleague and breaking into laughter. It struck me that life in this hospital was normal. It was a realization that would deepen as time went by. My initial perceptions were colored by preconceived notions I had of hospitals. I saw a woman waiting in the hall with her daughter and she was engaged in a conversation with another. She spoke, I recall, like a woman in a shopping mall. Her speech was engrossed in domestic details that seemed superficial and out of context in a hospital where children were being treated for cancer. I felt a flush of resentment. She had no heart. How could she be so shallow I thought to not realize the gravity of the situation? I would later learn that this woman was caring and dedicated to her daughter. She had spent the greater part of each day for over a year in that hospital. This hospital was her second home and over time life had become normal and I learned that my initial perceptions were made by a jaundiced eye of a newcomer.