Care

Barbara Fisher

Without
Care
Chapter
XIII
 Barbara Fisher

Care
Without
Care
Chapter XIII

First published by Avon Books

(a division of The Hearst Corporation)
in September, 1972

© 1972 Barbara Fisher

All rights reserved.

For information address
Ten Penny Players, Inc.
www.tenpennyplayers.org
 We were called back to the hospital. We were
supposed to bring him in on Saturday. We did.
The girl on the reception desk couldn’t locate his
admittance sheet or casebook. She looked through
the whole cart. It was in Sunday’s schedule. She
said that they had made a mistake; he wasn’t
expected until the next day. I said please call
orthopedic just to make sure. She did and they
were expecting him on Sunday. I also asked that
she call one of the doctors. She did: he suggested
that if we didn’t want to come back, we leave him
there overnight. I said, no. I didn’t want to pay
extra charges for an unnecessary day or have him
away from home longer than we had to. We turned
around and went home. We unpacked the lunch
and ate it together in the living room.
The next morning we went back up to the hos-
pital. Athelantis was examined and sent home
because of his temperature.
In a few weeks we were called back to the hos-
pital. We had another pediatric checkup. It was a
female pediatrician. Athelantis didn’t like her. He
managed to raise his temperature two points. She
said that his ears were infected. I said that it was
probably his normal crankiness. She refused to
admit him. He broke the thermometer, kicked her
in the stomach, and then took apart the blood pres-
sure gauge, ripping it into three pieces.
We went home and I called our doctor. She
said to take his temperature again after 6:00 P.M.
If it went down, he was fine and we didn’t have to
bring him in. It went down.
A couple of days later we received an appoint-
ment slip from the hospital telling us to come in for
a pediatrics checkup. I called admissions and
asked whether or not they had sent it because
there was a bed for him. She checked for me and
found out that pediatrics wanted to check him out
again at the surgeon’s suggestion. I called the sur-
geon. I said that Athelantis didn’t like the doctor
and that our doctor had said there was nothing
wrong with him. I was reaching the end of my
rope. I didn’t see any way out of this. I felt that
we would be going back and forth endlessly with-
out getting further along.
I asked if it would be possible for one of the
nurses from his floor to come down and be with
him the next time they tried to admit him. Maybe
a familiar face would calm him down. The surgeon
said yes, if the nurse agreed. I called the floor.
The nurse said sure. I called my pediatrician and
asked whether or not she felt a tranquilizer before
leaving for the hospital might work. She felt it was
a good idea. She said that she’d call the hospital
pediatrician and discuss it with her. She did. The
hospital pediatrician was against the tranquilizer.
My doctor said that she’d send me a prescription
before she left for her vacation. It never arrived.
Her secretary had misaddressed the envelope.
I took him to the clinic the day indicated. The
female pediatrician wasn’t there. One of the other
doctors said he’d look at Athelantis. I said, “No,
the whole point of this was to get him familiar with
one doctor. If the pediatrician isn’t here, we’ll
wait.” By this time I was at the hospital with
child, lunch, and tape recorder. I no longer want-
ed to rely on memory. About a half hour later she
finally arrived.
Athelantis took one look at the white jacket
and started yelling and screaming. She had to call
another doctor in to help me hold him down while
she examined him. She said that his ears were
red. The other young doctor took a look and
agreed. She gave me prescriptions. They weighed
Athelantis first; I’d asked that they do that. I felt
that I’d give them one last try. If we took all the
medicine and they still refused to admit him I’d
start trying for another hospital. The whole
episode cost thirty-eight dollars. If it worked, it
would be worth it.
The young residents were all clustered outside
the examining room as we left. One of them (the
resident, as a matter of fact, who had prescribed
the medicine not obtainable east of California)
pointed and said: “That’s an Apert’s baby.” I said,
“Yes.” He started telling the others about the elon-
gated cranium and the neurological aspect of the
syndrome. I told him that it had already been
done. He said, “You’re so knowledgeable!” I said,
“It’s easy. Apert’s is very rare. It only started
showing up in the medical books in the late ‘50’s.”
“It’s nice to see you’re so interested,” he responded.
(Doesn’t it sound like run Spot run? This is Dick
grown up?)
We went outside to wait for our prescriptions
and clinic card. The young resident came running
after me. “I have pictures of the first Apert’s baby,
if you’d like to see him.” I said, “Sure, “ and fol-
lowed him down the hall. He pulled out a glass
slide and held it up to the light. “Doesn’t that look
like your son?” he asked. “No,“ I said, “the head
configurations are different.” He pulled out anoth-
er slide. “Doesn’t that look familiar?” “No,” I said,
“Athelantis’s hands are different. He has paddles.”
And I held them up for inspection. We both smiled
cordially at each other and I left.

Twelve days later we returned to the hospital

for another checkup with the lady doctor with
whom we were supposed to be establishing rap-
port. We waited over an hour before we were
called. The big addition was Muzak. One of the
doctors came out, listened and said to an aide, “I
would have preferred air conditioning.”
The nurse finally called us. I had to undress
him and put him on the scale. While we had been
waiting Athelantis had had a bad diarrhea attack.
“Mother,” the nurse said, “Please don’t empty that
in these hampers. Wait until you get back out-
side.” The sodden lump lay through the tempera-
ture-taking, the inevitable waiting, and the
redressing. His temperature had leaped two
points.
We went outside, dumped the poop and waited
an hour and a half before the doctor approached.
She had discarded her white coat. Athelantis did-
n’t like her any better. She looked in his ear and
was pleased. One was a little red. The other
looked fine. I asked about his temperature. She
said that they had decided to disregard his temper-
ature. It was meaningless in his case. She wrote
in his chart that he was ready for admission and
that his temperature should be ignored unless he
had other symptoms.
She and the nurse then had a long talk, trying to
decide what to do with his chart. We waited anoth-
er forty-five minutes while they decided that we did-
n’t have to go to the admitting area at all since they
already had his admission papers filled in.