J & J’s Visit to the Hospital

The boys displaying their space-tacular sand art pictures that Mary Kate made for them during her hospital stay

I promise this will be my last post about the hospital (unless, heaven forbid, we end up back there again for some reason), but I would be remiss if I didn’t write about Jonathan and Jeffrey’s visit.

My boys are twins and as such have a few similarities, but mostly they are completely different. This little hospital visit brought those differences into sharp contrast. It was quite entertaining to behold actually (you can always count on the boys for entertainment). Good thing too because good entertainment is a little hard to come by when you’re stuck in a hospital room.

Mike brought the boys to visit on the second evening of our stay. They hadn’t been there 30 seconds before Jonathan got a look of sheer terror on his face and began wailing…“Mom, I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to go home right now!” His giant eye’s were even more giant, like round saucers, as he beheld, in paralyzing fear, all the machines, beeping monitors, nurses and IV tubes stuck in Mary Kate’s arm (the IV tubes were stuck in MK’s arm, not the nurses). Right away he saw the possibilities that MIGHT and COULD happen in the future and his thoughts were just a racin’. “Mom, am I going to have to come to the hospital someday?” he said through genuine tears. After that he was hyper-alert and nervous the entire visit. Every move the nurses made, every beep-beep-beep of the machines…he would jump and ask questions in a nervous, quivering voice… “What is that nurse doing?” “Why does Mary Kate have that in her arm?” “What is that red light on her finger?”  “Why is that machine beeping like that?” The kid was a wreck! He kept asking me, “Mom, does the hospital hurt?”

The bad thing about that last question was that Mary Kate was just starting another round of her IVIG treatment and was feeling some intense pain from the medicine entering her veins. I knew I had to get Jonathan out of the room so he wouldn’t see her tears and completely lose it. Luckily the hospital offers services for the siblings of the patients. Cousin Sonja took the boys up to the third floor for play time and crafting supervised by very kind hospital volunteers. This helped Jonathan calm down a bit. Primary Children’s thinks of everything!

In the above picture I was trying to get Jonathan to smile with his gift from Mary Kate. You can see by looking at his eyes that he is a worried, worried boy. The hospital was not his favorite place (not that it’s any one’s favorite place).

Jeffrey on the other hand…

…loved it. Granted, he would certainly be singing a different tune if he were a patient (this is the kid that has to be sedated in order to have his teeth looked at), but he was fascinated with the place. There were awesome machines everywhere, kid-sized wheel chairs to ride in, cool tubes hooked right up to his sister, long halls for running crazy, elevators to ride from floor to floor, doors upon doors to check behind, hundreds of buttons to push (don’t worry we didn’t let him push any). He was soaking it all up…not an ounce of nervousness anywhere (except I was nervous because Jeffrey has been known to break expensive things. Can you imagine how much one of those IV machines would cost us to replace if Jeffrey got his hands on it?)

I couldn’t believe how different the boy’s reactions to the hospital situation were (actually I can believe it). We definitely have a type A boy and a type B boy. Maybe that’s why they get along so well, after all, opposites attract…they must balance each other out. It’s true that they really do make a good pair.

An hour and a half after they arrived, Jonathan’s anxiety was at a peak and Mike decided it was time to head home. Jonathan was completely relieved, but Jeffrey was hopping mad that we were forcing him to leave just as he was getting the hang of the wheel chair.

As they were leaving Jeffrey went up and gave Mary Kate a big hug. Jonathan wanted to say goodbye too, but he just couldn’t bring himself to touch Mary Kate (she had a few too many tubes sticking out of her and what if her disease was catching, heaven forbid?). Jonathan’s a tender heart though (this is where he and Jeffrey are very similar) and he just couldn’t leave with Mary Kate thinking he didn’t love her. He forced himself to give her a hug, but as you can see, he was very careful about it.

As I was walking Mike and the boys to the car, Jonathan made me *’Santa promise’ that he would never have to come to the hospital ever again. Let’s just hope that he doesn’t or we are going to be in big trouble.

*Santa promise – If you make a Santa promise and then you break it, Santa will not bring presents to you at Christmas time. When you make a Santa promise it's a very serious thing.