Hitting the Pause Button for a Little Bit
Our youngest and newest grandson, Ace Walker Mastroianni, ran into a road bump in his nascent life a week ago today that required a week's stay at Children's Hospital, Minneapolis, in the Infant Care Center unit. Children's hospitals in general, I think, do everything humanly possible to make this stress overload experience as gentle as it can potentially be for parents, family and friends. The unit is quiet and dimly lit. I mentioned to my daughter Bridget, Ace's mommy par excellence, that you could tell the babies were sick because there was hardly any crying. Everyone in the room is overwhelmed, including the infants. The staff is compassionate, concerned, attentive. But it's still the proverbial hot mess. In Ace's situation, it was a matter of ruling out issues, beginning with the life threatening and working down the ladder from there. Basically his 'bottom rung' was that his tummy isn't strong enough to digest and move waste like it...