Apollo Children's Hospital x2

The hardest thing about being Mom here is living with the knowledge that there is no 911.

We had a scary reminder of this a couple of weeks ago, when Samuel woke in the night laboring to breathe. We thought he might be having an asthma attack, since he hadn't shown any signs of being sick, so we called the Consulate nurse, Deborah, for help. We could see that Samuel was losing color in his lips and face and that he was sucking in his muscles under his ribs in an effort to breathe, so we decided to take him to the emergency room at Apollo Children's Hospital.

The next hour was probably the most panicked of my life. We had our car, and John has experience driving here, but we weren't sure how to get to the hospital. Deborah and Olivia (another nurse at the Consulate) asked the hospital to send an ambulance, but after waiting over 30 minutes for it to arrive, we gave up on that. We finally decided to drive to the Consulate and have Olivia talk us to the hospital from there, since we knew it was in the general area.

Thankfully, Samuel seemed to improve a little during all the commotion. We got him there and into the ER, where a doctor saw us immediately. Samuel and I spent the rest of the night in the emergency room, where he got a series of nebulizer treatments and a chest X-ray. Here he is in all his misery.

It turned out to be a serious case of croup. His chest X-ray was clear and he didn't respond to albuterol, which ruled out asthma. The breathing treatments worked their magic, and late the next morning John came to pick us up. He brought me a Diet Coke, which proves how much he loves me. Here we are after our sleepless night.

Here are some things I learned from the excitement:

1. A hospital tour is not enough. Shortly after we arrived in Chennai, the Consulate set up a tour of Apollo's main hospital and the Children's Hospital so newcomers would be familiar with them in case of emergency. I think the idea is to set some fears to rest. I'm really glad I went on the tour, because once we got to the hospital I didn't have the stress of being in a new place. I knew where to go and basically what to do. HOWEVER, the hospital tour did not address the all-important detail of how to get there. That might sound ridiculous, but remember that the Consulate strongly recommends that we hire a driver here. In 6 months, I've driven our car about three feet down the driveway. John drives a bit more, but not much. And there are people at the Consulate who think we're pretty adventurous. In the middle of the night, the driver is fast asleep at home, over an hour away in our case. Also, no 911. One of the first things I'm going to do at our next post is drive myself to and from the hospital a couple of times.

2. The next time I go to a hospital in India, I will remember to bring food and water (unless I'm too panicked, of course).

3. There is a reason Indian patients have the entire extended family in tow. I kept having people walk up to me and say things like this: "We need to give another nebulizer treatment, but we're out of the medicine so you need to go over to the pharmacy and buy some more." I'd be happy to do that, but in the meantime what do I do with the screaming child that is hooked up to your monitors here? I talked to the doctor, who agreed to send someone to the pharmacy for me. Thank you, random hospital gofer.

4. Everything in India happens in a crowd. I know I've mentioned this before. There is no such thing as privacy here. John took this really lousy clandestine photo of the emergency room to try to illustrate this idea.

I've decided that the biggest culture shock for me here has been dealing with the sheer number of people. They are everywhere. It's hard to explain what I mean. There are 1.2 billion people in India, and it always feels like at least half of them are standing right there in the room with you. The emergency room was no exception. And the woman in the next cot was snoring like you wouldn't believe.

5. We have great neighbors and a fantastic Consulate community. People were up in the dead of night helping us figure this out, staying with the kids, making sure we got to where we needed to be and saw the doctors we needed to see. For the next few days, everyone checked on us and asked what they could do to help. We felt loved.

6. A trip to the hospital here is full of drama, but the good news is that the doctors were good. The doctor on the overnight shift was fine, but the two doctors we saw in the morning were great. So once you find the doctor, you should be in good hands.

So that was my first experience (aside from the tour) with Apollo Children's Hospital. The pediatrician who gave Samuel his final checkup in the emergency room heard a heart murmur, and that leads me to Hospital Experience Number 2.

Dr. Meena heard the murmur and said that though it was minor and probably nothing, we should get it checked just to be sure. I have a minor heart murmur myself, so I wasn't too worried. It never hurts to check, though. Olivia at the Consulate arranged for an appointment with a cardiologist.

The appointment was yesterday. Since the emergency room visit went so smoothly (once we got to the hospital, anyway) I naively thought that this was going to be quick and easy. Silly me. The appointment was at 11:30 a.m. I dutifully arrived on time, got registered ... and didn't leave until almost 3 p.m.

I'll spare you the blow-by-blow account and skip to the highlight. The place was packed and just insane. Sick kids and their entourages of parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles were milling around everywhere. There was not an open seat to be found and people were lining all the walls. Against this backdrop, I was expected to get Samuel to fall asleep so we could get an echocardiogram done. What!?!

Samuel drank the sedative like a champ, but the minute he started to feel drowsy it was time for a fight. He was NOT going to be forced to go to sleep. A nurse suggested I take him into the nursing mothers room where it would be quieter. I walked in to find about 10 Tamil women dying to pinch Samuel's cheeks and compare his cuteness to their babies'. Samuel and I walked all over that packed hospital in a desperate wrestling match. He screamed, writhed and twisted, trying to stay awake. I glared enviously at the other babies and toddlers who peacefully dropped off to sleep in their mothers' arms. What is WRONG with my children?

After a good 45 minutes of this, Samuel finally slept. Then I had to wait for two other procedures to finish before it was our turn. I was near tears, starving (I hadn't had lunch), and scared to death he was going to wake up before we could get into the ECHO room.

The happy ending to all this is that the heart murmur really is nothing. Samuel's heart is perfectly fine, the murmur is slight, and he'll probably grow out of it. I really liked the cardiologist, but I hope I never have to see him or the inside of that hospital ever again.