healthcare and whatnot

I'm writing this from the ER of the local hospital. I'm okay - I'm in the capacity of camp counselor. One of my kids spent all last night in horrible stomach pain, and we decided it might be appendicitis. We've been here for about 4 hours, maybe a little more. But she's seen a doctor and she's gotten pain medication, and she's finally, finally, blissfully sleeping.

I think about the frustration of being white and upper middle class and in an ER. And I remember the story I read from Without A Net about healthcare, and know that many of my friends would prefer to be in pain than try and get any healthcare.

My kid's mother called the hospital from France, and after she talked to her daughter for a few minutes, asked to speak to me. She was totally reasonable, even calm, for a mother whose daughter was lying in pain, untreated and waiting in a hospital in a foreign country. She thanked me for staying with her (what else was I going to do!?) and we vented to each other about the wait, and the doctors.

I sat with her, rubbing her feet, trying not to pray out loud, lest it offend her. C came over with her computer, and cookies, and company for a few hours. I have my support; C stood behind me, rubbing my shoulders while I rubbed my kid's feet through nubby hospital blankets. And honestly, I'm not that frustrated. I know the wait's going to be long and hellish, and I expect it now.

But when she was waiting three hours for the painkillers, she said so many times, so quietly, "I can't take it anymore. It hurts so much." And I had nothing to say, nothing to make it better, nothing more than the words of the nurses and doctors: "soon, honey. soon."

And I thought: if this were my child, my actual kid, I just might have strangled someone out of frustration by now. And I have so much admiration for the patience of mothers, older sisters, friends and counselors do this. The wait is hard and long and boring. But the feeling of helplessness when a kid is in pain is worse than all of it. No one - NO ONE - should ever have to feel that.