Wednesday, November 22, 2006

This morning, Shannon and I actually got out on time! Actually, we got to Dancu early! Dada was working all by herself today for the first time in a long time and it was good! The kids were really low key again today. I spent a lot of time with Petrica, as usual and just sang him Christmas songs and such. I also spent time with Costica, just rubbing his back and cuddling with him. And with Mihai I just did a bunch of random things. The day went really slow. But the kids were dressed really really cute! Dada also fed us lunch….lots of lunch! We had soup, bread (normal actually, not nasty) and a whole plateful of what she called spaghetti. From what I could see it was angel hair pasta (kind of) with a reddish orange sauce and there was so much sauce and the noodles were so soft that it was just this big orange, odd tasting mush. Nice of her though. At the hospital, I stared off with Nicu and I fed him (very difficult, but I succeeded!) and then lay on the bed and took a nap with him. While I was doing so, Marina came in and switched with Shannon who’d been with Vasilica and she decided to go see Iulia. Well, a little time passed and I was still napping with Nicu (who was finally out cold) when Shannon came in the room looking highly distraught. We asked her what was wrong and she said “Iulia died” and just started crying. I slipped my arm out from under Nicu and ran over to and just held her (Marina came too). It was such a surprise and I had such mixed feelings. Iulia has been with us this entire time. I’ve spent so many hours with that girl and tried so many things to make her happy. She broken my heart over and over and I’ve put so much into her. I’ll miss her and it’s a shock, but at the same time, I can’t say that I’m actually sad. I’m actually really happy. For a moment while I was holding Shannon I thought about Iulia and George in heaven, walking and talking and looking beautiful and just being happy and I started smiling. I mean, I’ve NEVER seen Iulia smile and to think that she’s smiling now – I just can’t explain what that means to me. You know, her situation was one of the saddest that I’ve seen and I’ve actually had many times when I went it her room and just prayed that she would die. I mean, she had no joy in this life, no future and was always in pain. I want one of my kids to have “Iulia” for a middle name. Well, anyway, Shannon was really upset and decided to go home. Marina and I talked for a little bit about Iulia and then Melissa came in and we told her. We left Melissa with Nicu and Vasilica and went down to go make sure that Iulia wasn’t just moved to a different room. Shannon said that she’d gone down there and no one was in Iulia’s room and it was all nice and tidy and cleaned up. So she asked a nurse “Unde este Iulia?” and the nurse pointed to the room and was like “in there!” and she’s like, “no she isn’t.” So then the nurse asked around and one of the mom’s said that she’d died the night before. So we went down there to make sure the mom was right and that she wasn’t just in another room. I was pretty sure, but Marina wanted to check. It was kind of traumatic because Iliuta, the little boy in the room next door wanted us to give him attention and the nurse always tries to get us to play with him (not that we don’t want to, but sometimes we can’t) and so she tried to and we asked her where Iulia was and she didn’t know that she’d passed away either and that same mom just casually was like “she died. She died last night.” And I felt really bad because the nurse looked so sad about it like we were. The traumatic thing was that this whole time the nurse was changing Iliuta’s pad because, well, let me explain. He has this big huge wound (bigger than a really big grapefruit) on his stomach. I saw it for the first time today and it was the worst thing I’ve seen here so far, aside from the dead man in Bucharest. It’s pussy and has these big red globs. One of the globs looked like it had slid down to his side. It looked like a really mushy, bright red cherry. Later I found out from Megan that he’s a burn victim and the cherry that I thought had slid down is actually always there. I didn’t have my contacts in, luckily. But they had to change him because his pad was soaked and it had soaked through his church which had a big wet spot on it. Yeah, so this whole time she was changing it and he didn’t seem to be upset or hurting at all and was just being active and trying to get our attention and we were just not able to give it to him. We didn’t stay with him either because not only were we not up to it, but we wanted to try and find Holly to talk to her about it. We went down to the first floor and found Abbi instead, who told us Holly wasn’t there yet. I decided to stay in that room with her. She was with a baby named Andrei or Adrian or something and there was another baby who’d just woken up that I went over with. He was reeeeally adorable and we found out his name was Gigi, but we weren’t sure whether he was a boy or a girl. We asked the moms, knowing they’d laugh at us and they did and we found out he’s a boy. The shirt he was wearing was way too small and his tummy was hanging out, so I gave him a shirt that was his size. He was reeeeally shy and just looked at me like I was huge and scary and tentatively played with the toys I gave him. I wasn’t really quite sure what to do with him and then Abbi left, so I went and held the other baby who started crying. I wasn’t too worried about Gigi, because I could see the other mom’s loved him and gave him lots of attention. After a while a nurse took Gigi and all the moms left the baby (who we’ll call Andrei) fell asleep. So I put him down and went to go try and find Megan or Jess to see when they were leaving. I couldn’t find them, but on the way out I found Bri, Mihai, Jenna and Holly who were all just getting there. I talked to them for a while and then discretely told Holly about Iulia and she told Bri and probably the others later. It was pretty sad and after that I walked home alone. On the way home, I started jogging to get across the street before the light changed and this street dog saw me and started running at me and snarling. I immediately stopped, didn’t look at him, acted calm and kept walking, paying no attention and amazingly he didn’t bite me. I was really surprised, because he was so ferocious and he was right at my heals. The look in his eyes said he wanted to, but he didn’t. When I got home Shannon was still there and didn’t look so good, but went to Dacie shortly thereafter. After a while Megan and Jess came home too and I spent a lot of time on the computer looking for an apartment and planning italy. About the time they left to go to Outreach, Shannon and Melissa came home from Dacie. Shannon didn’t feel well and got right into bed and was tossing and turning and moaning. Sad day. I eventually switched computers and have been on here ever since.