Saturday, September 9, 2006

We didn’t have anything at all planned until 2 o clock, so I woke up at 10:30. I went to go take a shower when I woke up and right before I put shampoo in my hair, the fawcet just fell off. I tried to screw it on but it just wouldn’t work, so I went and got Megan (who put it back on last time it fell off) and she couldn’t do it either. So none of us got showers J. Also, Christi was supposed to come over and fix our living room light (and the shower at that point too) but he never came. At 2:30 we met up with Podul and went to the hospital for the first time. Before we went though we got some instructions from Holly. The whole thing is actually pretty complicated. I felt like if I made the slightest mistake I might get kicked out of the hospital. I also kind of get the impression that people in the hospital don’t like us. I’m not sure why that is. Anyway, it’s really complicated because there are like certain floors where if certain people are there you can’t go on that floor or else you’ll get yelled at. Like, on the first floor, there’s a doctor who wears a green coat and has white fluffy hair who’ll yell at you and say “you can’t be here because you smell like a dirty animal and you’ll make the kids sick,” which is actually incredibly ironic because Romanians smell VERY strongly of BO. And we give the kids diapers but you have to first of all figure out whether to leave the diaper with the kid or with the nurse because sometimes the certain nurses will sell the diapers to other mom’s whose sick kids are there because diapers are like money here. But on the other hand, some mom’s on certain floors will steal the diapers if you just leave it in the crib. So basically you have to know the people on the floors and act accordingly, but we don’t really know any of this yet. Also, it’s really good to get to know the mom’s that are on the floor because apparently they’ll usually know more info about the kids and also that way they’re less likely to steal the baby’s diapers. We got a whole lot more instructions too, but I can’t remember. So we walked over to the hospital and on the way there there were some gypsies and their kids ran up to us and just did some weird things like basically make raptor noises at us – during which time we kept our purses very close. I was observing the gypsies as well as I could because until Mihai gets here I can’t really start on my research by doing anything else. The Iasi Children’s hospital is supposedly the best around for quite a large area of Romania. Because of this, there are mothers who will take their kids to it from hours away and suffer great sacrifice to have them there. Also, some of the kids have parents who will take them there but who can’t afford to stay with them because they either have to work back home or take care of several other kids. So as a result, a lot of them are temporarily orphans. We take care of both temporary and permanent orphans. But even though it’s the best hospital around, it’s a sad excuse for a hospital. Imagine a building that, if in the US, is so run down that you would think it surely must be abandoned. It’s tall, with black soot all around the outside of the building, random heaps of crumpled concrete and wood and basically construction supplies, and smoke coming from a grate in the ground right next to the entrance. The inside is no better, with floors crumbling so bad that you have to be careful when walking on them and with random holes in the ceilings. Imagine that, and then try to convince yourself it’s the best hospital around. On top of it all, the nurses and doctors use superstition and tradition more than actual medicine and I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing as sterilization. Oh, but they know all about the “truth” that if you keep a window open the draft it creates will kill you, causing the whole hospital to be stiflingly hot (no air conditioning) and the “fact” that if you sit on the floor you’ll be infertile (to be read very sarcastically). I don’t hate the doctors and nurses whatsoever though. I mean, I feel bad for them. There are very few people in Romania who are willing to do what they do. It’s very hard work for not much money and there’s way more for them to do than they could ever do. Not only that, but seeing these conditions day after day for years must wear on them. It’s no wonder they don’t play with the kids, not only would their backs eventually start to just kill them, but they probably wouldn’t be able to stand the pain that would be caused by letting themselves get attached to these kids. So we got to the hospital and started at the top (8th floor). On each floor, starting with the 8th, Holly would take two of us to one of the wings (There are two sides on each floor with a big open space and the stairs in the middle of the two sides. Each side has 2 wings. We are only aloud on the left side on each floor for some reason.), find the nurse and ask “aveti copiii fara mama?” or “do you have kids without moms?” The 8th, 7th and 6th floors all had “orphans” on them but the 5th, 4th, 3rd and 2nd all didn’t for some reason. So, although, technically we aren’t allowed on the 1st floor, Shannon, Jenna, Holly and I took that floor anyway because the crazy doctor wasn’t there and the really nice nurse was instead. So, Holly came back from asking and there were 5 kids on the floor. So she took us all down the hallway and basically just dropped us all off in a room and pointed out which kid we were all supposed to take. So when we got to my room, she basically just said, “That’s your baby. She can be held. Here’s a diaper for you to change her with. You can change her over there (and pointed to a bed)” and I was just left there to figure out what to do for 2 hours. The first thing I did was pick the baby up and take him over to the bed to change his diaper. He had been in his crib so long that his limbs weren’t very flexible and he couldn’t really turn his head or move his body much. Basically he was bent to one side, so holding him was a bit tough. When I changed him I realized that he was soooo skinny. You know when you see those pictures of the babies who are basically just bone? That was him. His thinness combined with his bent frame made me really afraid of breaking him, but I was able to change his diaper. While I was changing him he threw up on the bed and I tried my best to clean it up, but I felt so awkward because I had no idea what the rules of the hospital were and if I was doing it all right and if people were watching me going “what is she DOING?” and I hate that feeling. Anyway, so after that I just walked around with him for a while and tried to get him to look at me because he wasn’t very good at keeping eye contact. He also wheezed a lot. There were a couple of notecards on the door. One for each of the two babies in the room, but I didn’t know which was for him so I couldn’t figure out what his name was. There was a mom in the room with the other baby though, so I started asking her about her own baby in an effort to figure out which card they both belonged to. By doing this I figured out that his name was Constantine and he had hydrocephaly and something else. I knew hydrocephaly had something to do with the baby having water on the brain which caused their head to get bigger and bigger although my baby’s head wasn’t that big yet. Not too long after that the other mother in the room brought out a picture and starting looking at it and crying and rocking and I got the impression that it was a picture of a child that had died. I wasn’t sure what to do because I wasn’t so sure about cultural norms and so I decided to try to give her some privacy instead of trying to hug her because knowing Romania, I thought she might not like that. I wasn’t sure if I was aloud to go into the hall so I just walked to the doorway. Since there wasn’t a bed there for me to sit on and since I was really tired I decided to sit on the ground. That didn’t last very long at all though because pretty soon a very alarmed nurse came up to me shaking her head and speaking really fast in Romanian. I said “Nu inteleg” or “I don’t understand.” I think she was really surprised because I don’t think she’d realized I was American because later on she said I looked Romanian (which I took as a compliment). She was a little taken aback but she was very nice, albeit I felt like she looked on me as a very stupid American girl like “These American girls are so silly. You’d think they’d know better than to sit on the floor. They’ll become infertile!!!” I actually felt like she looked on me as kind of a little sister who she had to guide and help because she really did help me. I was able to ask her about Constantine and figured out that he also had respiratory problems and that his parents hadn’t taken very good care of him (they often don’t take good care of their children who have disabilities) and had basically abandoned him there. That’s part of the reason he’s so malnourished I think and I think the other part is that he seems to throw up quite a bit. Shortly after she left another woman came in and began to talk with the mom who was there with me. I watched as she told the woman not to be sad and asked what cause she had to be so upset. She sat with her for a long time while the mother told her her story and cried. I didn’t understand it almost at all so most of all I just felt the huge sadness of whatever was going on. I had a few suspicions though which were confirmed later on when I spoke with her myself. After the lady left, I felt like I should say something to her to let her know I cared and so I said “Nu inteleg dar imi pare foarte bine” or “I don’t understand, but I’m very sorry.” It turned out she spoke some English, so I sat down on the bed next to her while she told me her story. Apparently she had twins. The little boy in the room, whose name was Liviu and a little girl who’d died just that morning at 11am. I didn’t understand completely but I think that they hadn’t really been sick before and that morning was the first time she’d taken them to the hospital and the doctors hadn’t said her daughter was very sick but she’d just died anyway. I don’t think she really knew what was wrong with her son either although he looked healthy to me. Actually, he was an incredibly beautiful baby. Her husband wasn’t there because he was working in Sibiu to have enough money for the hospital. Also, apparently she’d had 5 kids and this was the third one to die. The only other one still living was a little boy of about six and the other twin had been her only girl. I felt sooo bad and had no idea what to say to her, so I just said I was sorry and that not all babies die and to have faith and rubbed her back a little which she said “multumesc” or “thankyou” to. Not long after I’d talked to her another doctor came in to check on Constantine (probably the 2nd or 3rd which had done so), which meant I had to put him back in the crib. He would always cry whenever I put him back down because that’s probably the only time he is every held. But by the time the doctor was done I had to go and the other girls came to get me so I didn’t get to hold him again or say much more to the poor mother. It was possibly the saddest room I’ve ever been in. When we all came back together everyone was very excited and telling all about what their rooms had been like, but I didn’t think they really understood what a tragedy had really been going on there in my room. Then some of us walked to the mall for the first time to get some groceries and a curling iron. After that we had to take a taxi home and then rush to the soccer activity that was going on with the branch. We’re such a large portion of the branch that we have to be there for even the smallest of things. Soccer was actually really fun. Shannon, Melissa and I ended up being the only girls there because the rest either got lost or got distracted and didn’t end up coming. Oh, and actually we ended up playing ultimate Frisbee. One group was playing soccer and one group was playing ultimate so I played ultimate because soccer was only guys and I didn’t feel like separating from the girls. So since that was only my second time ever playing I wasn’t too hot at first. That made it so I almost never got thrown the Frisbee because when you’re short you have to actually prove yourself before they give you any kind of a chance. But after a little while I started doing amazing every time I got the Frisbee, so I started to get it more and more often and by the end it ended up an amazing game with some awesome plays. The only bad thing was that after it was over and when we were just standing there I guess one of the guys who’d been playing soccer who was just investigating the church but not a member had grabbed one of the sister missionaries legs in kind of a jerky way. And since sister missionaries are so careful about physical contact with guys as it is, it had upset her a little. They were kind of unsure as to whether to say something to him though until as he was going up the stairs he totally slapped my but – REALLY HARD. I was really shocked too be that was NOT what I was expecting right then and so I just turned around and stared at him with my mouth open. He’s not going to be allowed to come anymore I don’t think. Pretty sure he was just there for the girls. After that we briefly dropped by Scala before Shannon and I headed over to Podul to use their shower. It was soo nice because the Podul apartment is much quieter than ours and so not only did we finally get showers, but we got to just relax and read a little and talk a little too. We left around 11 and on the way home 2 Romanian guys started talking to us. We try to be careful about talking to them, especially when it’s just two of us and two of them and it’s dark and no one’s around and especially since we don’t want them knowing where we live, so though at first I responded very curtly to their questions, after a few questions and when they hadn’t gotten the message, I just ignored them. They followed really closely behind us all the way home and kept saying stuff to us like “are you scared? Huh?” I remember thinking “Nope. Just not stupid.” It’s amazing how varied the male race really is. They’ve got some real jerks amidst some amazing gentlemen. Aaaaand, that’s about all I remember for that night except that I made some AMAZING potatoes after I got home.