Today was the day when we were to find out whether our youngest would need brain surgery.
Just getting there
We left home around 930 for a 1030 appointment, a 20 minute drive away. After 45 minutes of queuing in traffic we were nearly on hospital premises. For reasons unknown, in the brand new hospital, the patient parking is on the entirely opposite side of the site to the entrance, and you have to go past the ambulance, patient transfer and taxi drop-off areas to get there - each of which is frequently double parked and blocks everything. Then once you get past all of that, the entrance and exit are both on the same 3-way stop. Meaning that everyone trying to get into the car park has to expertly weave in-between everyone trying to leave the car park. Then, the car itself is horribly designed so that going between levels is a curved ramp into on-coming traffic. Meaning that if there’s traffic trying to get out of the car park, everybody trying to get in, is also blocked. It’s a functional disaster.
Anyway, rant over, having watched the traffic lights to the hospital flick past red for a third time without us moving, I jumped out of the car, pulled the little guy out of the back and carried him the 100 or so meters in the side door before we froze.
We navigated to the imaging department and I checked us in just in time for 1030 slot. There were two other kids in the waiting room, and a hospital waiting room is always a humbling experience. No matter how bad you think your week is going a waiting room at a children’s hospital always reminds you of how much worse things could be.
The waiting game
Relatively quickly, a technician brings out a robe for him to wear.
This was going to be a fight. Given all of the troubles we’ve had recently with just getting him to wear a T-shirt, a hospital gown was going to be interesting.
Luckily, I had the foresight to load up the travel bag with a fair amount of his favourite snack and so the bribery commenced. I’m not proud of that moment. And I can still see the look that one of the mothers gave me. But to my earlier point. Hospital waiting rooms are some of the most challenging and tragic places on the planet. She might have given me eyes, but she didn’t know what I was dealing with. Now was not the time to make some grand stand of parenting. This was not the hill to die on. And would her life be better with a tantruming toddler screaming his head off for the next half hour?
His mother joined us 15 minutes later having managed to park the car. She informed me that the car park was actually fine. The entire 30 minutes that we sat in traffic back from the highway was because of drop-off and 3-way stop.
By 11 we were called through.
The technician asked us to confirm his full name and date of birth - and both of us got his birthday wrong and stated his brother’s. The technician, went on to confirm that we were there for a brain scan - at which point his mother interrupted, stating that we were there to look at his optic nerves too.
The technician, umm’ed and err’ed, before finally saying that he didn’t know, all that he had was the chart and that he’d go see the neurologist on call to confirm.
Unfortunately, given the high demands on MRI, we lost our slot for the next kid in line.
Eventually when the technician came back he confirmed that everything was correct and that we were lined up for the correct procedure. It turns out that a “whole head” MRI does in fact, include the eyes.
That just meant that we now had to wait for the next slot, subject to fitting around the other kids with anesthesia. We eventually were invited in around 1130.
And then all hell broke loose
Hospital policy, as it turns out, is that any child over 3 doesn’t get anesthesia for an MRI. Despite any previous condition. Irrespective. Regardless. To hell with meeting patients where they are or their conditions.
So I have a child, with development delays, separation anxiety, hyperactivity, noise sensitivity and possibly, probably autism.
The good doctors of the children’s hospital therefore want to put him inside of a dark tunnel, that makes horrible, loud, scary noises like it’s about to crush you and just assume that he’ll keep still for the 5 to 10 minutes to takes to take the scan. Yeahhhhhh…
Before we even step in the room, we take off his boots. Which is mostly fine - he’s familiar with taking his snow boots off when going inside places. But then, we need to take his pants off too. This is not okay. The panic starts to rise. But the technician doesn’t care, they have a schedule to keep.
We’re ushered into the room with a big machine taking up half the wall, with the mechanical background noise of vacuum pumps. He. No. Likey.
But I pick him up and sit him on the table.
Fear.
The technicians need to put some ear plugs in his ears. Oh great! Strangers touching his ears.
Panic.
They need him lying down.
I gently push him back and try to convince him to lie down.
Not okay. Not okay. There’s a look of terror in his face. He’s already shouting my name. Pleading with me.
As soon as his back hits the bed, the two technicians spring into action. The technician from earlier clamps his arms to his side, while a second female assistant wraps a sort of yoga mat around him. It is quickly surrounded by a second blanket. It looks sterile, white and heavy, like a weighted blanket for a mental asylum.
The blanket is then strapped down to the table with two inch velcro straps (that could be from an asylum), and a compressed air line connected to where his feet might be, so the whole thing compresses like a pressure cuff when a doctor takes your blood pressure.
At this point, we’re already hysterical. Weeping and sobbing and screaming my name.
From under the table, the second technician pulls, what I can only describe as a martial arts sparring helmet - the sort that protects you from brain injury. He’s in no position to fight it off.
Alas, the helmet was not the end of it. Then a cage is produced from under the table. It’s locked to the table, and then he’s slid up so his head is in the middle of it. Foam pads are wedged in-between the helmet and cage - completely locking his head in place.
At this point, with child hysterically screaming, the second half of the cage is produced and locked over his face.
That’s it. He looses it. We’re in a full blown panic attack.
I only know that he’s still conscious and breathing because of the screaming.
A laser from above activates and shines down on his face.
I know that it is for the technicians to ensure that he is perfectly centred with the magnet. For him it may as well be the laser sights of his firing squad.
The table slides inside of the magnet and the constant scream is replaced again with desperate cries of my name. What can I do, but tell him it’s all going to be okay and it will be over soon?
After a minute or so, the technicians have sufficiently setup to start imaging.
The inside of the MRI, beyond view, behind the plastic shields springs into life and moves into position. For those that are unfamiliar, an MRI machine sounds like a gigantic robot has come to life and is trying to stomp on your head.
And it goes on, and on, and on.
I don’t know how long it went on for. After what felt like 5 minutes of my child pleading for his life and calling my name. The stomping stops. I think it’s over. He thinks it’s over. It turns out that the machine was simply repositioning and starting over for a second pass.
All I could do was stand somewhere near his feet and tell him useless statements of the obvious or just outright lies.
“You’re doing so good”
“You’re such a brave boy”
“It’s almost over”
“It’s just a scary noise”
These were the words of my mantra, during the longest moments of my life.
Eventually the stomping died back again, and the table slid out from the magnet.
I wanted to tear everything off of him, but allowed the technician to do the bits that looked expensive around his head. He practically leapt off the table and into my arms. He held me with a terror, like he was never going to let me go, as he wept into my shoulder.
The technician just chuckled to herself and said “he’s a screamer”
The come down
I carried the poor boy outside, swooping down on the way, to pick up pants and boots. We exit through the reinforced steel security doors and out into the waiting room where his mother was sat - playing with her phone, as if nothing had happened, not knowing what we had just been through. All she saw was a dad putting on a strong face for his boy, and a boy, a bit snotty around the edges but otherwise looking mostly okay. Which I guess he was, ever step away from that place eased his burden and getting through the doors had signalled that it was all over.
He was, of course, a bit weepy, and not even his favourite HotWheels were enough to let go of me.
However, as I crouched down, I told him that he could take off the gown now and put on his shirt. Well he was tugging at it and threw it on the floor in seconds.
To continue with the earlier theme of bribery, we had a chocolate cupcake in the go-bag, I decided that now was the moment for this little hero to indulge in some comfort eating.
A family friend that works at the hospital arrived at that moment, and it was decided to get away from the imaging department as quickly as possible. Get down to the coffeeshop and get our champion a cookie and a coffee for my nerves.
A truncated lunch
By the time we got to the coffee shop, it was fast approaching lunchtime, and the little guy didn’t want a cookie, not when he had homemade chocolate cupcakes.
Now was the time to kick our heels and wait around.
We had an appointment scheduled with neurosurgery at 14:45 for the consultation of the MRI results to decide next steps.
Just a little under 3 hours. Not quite enough time to really go home and come back (given the hour it had taken us to get in in the morning). Too cold to go outside for a walk around the local non-existent neighbourhood. Not really enough time to head to some of the nearby shops. Yet too much time to be sat in corridors and waiting rooms with a toddler.
In a stroke of genius, his mother decided to swing by the receptionist’s desk for neurosurgery and ask if there was any chance - given that we were already here - that we could be squeezed in a bit earlier. The receptionist said that the specialist returned from lunch at 1, that we should make sure that we were back before 1, and we’d be seen.
Which more or less confirms most of what I’ve suspected for a while, that appointments are little more than suggested arrival times and it’s really a first-come-first-serve basis of whomever turned up regardless of the appointment time.
That gave us time to chat a little and finish our coffee before heading to our third waiting room of the day.
Bittersweet goodbye
As is tradition, we were called into a consultation room and allowed to wait for a few minutes before the resident-of-the-week came in to confirm identity, reason for visit and take a few vitals. All the time, reassuring us with concerned face and lots of “hmmm… I hear you” and a few “I’m sure you have nothing to worry about“s.
After we had sufficiently flexed our own anatomical credentials and asked a few questions on recent research papers that he couldn’t answer, we were cleared for the specialist to enter.
The MRI as it turned out, was not the cleanest that he’d ever seen - but was perfectly sufficient for what we needed.
His cerebro-neural fluid was within normal ranges, pressure on the optic nerve had not increased and his head size was still large (at the 98th percentile) in the intervening period it had only grown within what was expected for someone in that percentile.
Neurosurgery’s opinion - no further follow up required. We were free to go.
No surgery required.
Haircut
As if not sufficiently traumatized by the day, and suddenly free of the hospital in the early afternoon and several hours earlier than expected, we decided to head across town to the children’s hair salon for him to get his first hair cut.
He was a little unsure at first, but they had a slide, and cars that you could sit in. Yes, there was a lady that wanted to touch his head a bit. That he was unsure of, but compared to everything else that day… besides dad was there to hold his hand, and when he started getting agitated, an iPad with trains was produced.
His ponytail was cut off relatively quickly, and at that point I would have happily got the clippers out and undercut the rest, but this wasn’t my show. His mother, like with his brother, wanted an “intermediate cut” - something in-between long hair, and the typical, short boy look.
The hairdresser proceeded to fuss a lot and slowly take some length off, cut in layers, wet it, brush it out.
I felt like all of this were pointless. Without the weight, it was likely to jump all up into curls by morning. I just didn’t want the hair in his eyes anymore.
In the end, no one wanted him to have bangs. And a square fringe was off the table. So now he’s got a bit a bit of a quiff and quite a lot of a bob at the back. But you know what. He looks like a boy. And he looks like a kid now - not a toddler. He looks much older. And he was so proud of his haircut. The next day at daycare he was proclaiming to everyone about his new haircut.
A great success.
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