The Most Magical Place You Never Want to Be

A little trip to Scottish Rite hospital last week completed our tour of North Texas Children’s Hospitals. Nothing major this time, but more on that in a later post. Shortly after Audrey was born and learning about her condition, I was hoping we could get a hospital punch card and rack up some points. I wasn’t asking for much. Maybe just a free MRI with every 10 visits. I’ve since learned that there is no frequent flyer program among the area children’s hospitals. Such a shame. Audrey would have hit Super Executive Platinum Chairman status by the end of 2019.

Our most recent trip reminded me of something I realized when we were in the hospital with Audrey. There are some locations that just feel magical – Disneyworld, Radio City Music Hall, a church sanctuary during Advent, and any participating McDonald’s after the McRib has been reintroduced.

For me, the most magical place of all is inside a children’s hospital. I hope your only experience with a children’s hospital is reading this blog or volunteering. It’s a place you don’t want to be because your child is sick. I know that my opinion is guided by the fact that my baby survived, and we got to bring her home. I saw families that were not so lucky. They probably hold a different view of childrens’ hospitals, and I don’t blame them.

It’s hard for an outsider to understand. After all, it is a building full of sick children, which feels a little bit like hell. But children’s hospitals are equal parts heaven and hell on earth. The buildings themselves are designed and decorated to put smiles on faces that have very few reasons to smile.  The elevators are not labeled “A,B, or C”, rather,  they have names like “Butterfly elevator” or “Airplane elevator.”  It just takes a little edge off the pain when the attendant at the admission desk says, “Take the butterfly elevator to radiology” instead of saying, “Take elevator B to radiology.”

We spent over three months at Children’s Medical  Center of Dallas after Audrey was born and I found what little peace I could muster in two places, the chapel, and the electric train display. I would sit by myself and stare at the trains with a childlike grin sweeping over my face. The trains didn’t change the status of my daughter’s health, but I appreciated the intentional attempt the hospital was making to bring joy to struggling families.

The chapel is still there, but the trains are gone. They removed the display to build the only thing that could make children smile more than 5500 square feet of electric trains – a Starbucks. I heard that the administration decided to relocate the display because the staff and patients revolted when the news broke that they were removing it. I’m not sure what the official economic system is in heaven, but I’m not so sure that it’s capitalism. I’ll try to answer that question in a future blog post. My guess is that the person who made the decision to remove the trains only worked in the hospital, they were never a guest.  If they had been there with their child, they would have understood that you can’t measure the impact of joy on a spreadsheet. But I digress.

As magical as the building is, it can’t hold a candle to the people who work in the hospital.  This is a group of people who walk straight into hell every day bringing hope and putting smiles on the faces of sick children, some of whom will not see their next birthday. Is there a harder job than that? Imagine what it would be like knowing that every day you go to work, you might see a child die.  I don’t have expertise in many areas, but being a guest in a children’s hospital is one of them.  I can honestly say I do not remember meeting anyone who worked in the hospital that was not a genuinely nice person.  Now, I know that this is not a universally correct statement.  In modern society, there is at least one a—hole for every setting and occasion, but I never met that person during our many trips.

The nurses work 12-hour shifts and they cannot relax or mail it in while they are working. If they did, their patient would probably die. That stresses me out just thinking about it. Despite that pressure, every nurse that worked with us was nothing but kind and cheerful. Maybe people that dedicate their lives to working with children just have a bigger heart.  I don’t know, but I do know that even the person who served me Thanksgiving dinner from the cafeteria did it with a friendly greeting and a smile even though she had to work on Thanksgiving Day.

I do not know what is worse for the doctors and nurses – dealing with their patients’ physical pain or the family’s emotional pain.  I know how awful it is to see your child in intense pain, but I can’t imagine going through that and then hearing that I would never get to take my baby home. Every time the hospital admin comes to you and says, “The doctor would like to meet with you in a consultation room” your heart sinks. The surgeons have to have those conversations every day.

Some of the people working in the hospital don’t make a lot of money, but they are storing up treasures in heaven. During this holiday season, if you run into someone who works at a children’s hospital, thank them and give them the gift that represents the true meaning of Christmas – Bitcoin.