Care

Barbara Fisher

Without
Care
Chapter
XVI
 Barbara Fisher

Care
Without
Care
Chapter XVI

First published by Avon Books

(a division of The Hearst Corporation)

© 1972 Barbara Fisher

Reprinted 2010
All rights reserved.
For information address
Ten Penny Players, Inc.
www.tenpennyplayers.org
 The mother of the other local Apert’s baby
called. Her pediatrician wanted to know if we
would give permission for his hospital to take
neurological x-rays of Athelantis. Their radiolo-
gist needed pictures of the skull of an older child
to help fill in their gaps in knowledge. She told
me that I would be amazed at how different the
treatment at her hospital was. I called her pedia-
trician. he said that we wouldn’t have to pay for
the x-rays since they needed them, but that our
hospital could have copies. We arranged to bring
Athelantis up for x-rays the next afternoon after
school.
The ride to the hospital by bus took about
twenty minutes. Athelantis was acting normally
until we walked through the entrance. Then he
began to yell. All the way up to the neurological
area he protested. When we walked through the
doors into the waiting room he dived under a
couch. A doctor came out to see what the noise
was all about. He went under the couch after
Athelantis, talking to him, trying to calm him
down, coax him out. it didn’t work.
 I called my friend’s pediatrician and asked if
he could prescribe a mild tranquilizer for
Athelantis. I’d been stupid and hadn’t given him
anything before I left the house. The bottle that
our doctor had prescribed languished in the medi-
cine cabinet. They couldn’t take x-rays if he were
hysterical. I really wanted them taken, since the
neuro department at our hospital was ignoring
Athelantis’s existence. The doctor asked what
our pediatrician had prescribed. I told him and
he said that if we came right upstairs (he had no
one to send down) he’d give Athelantis the med-
ication immediately.
We took an elevator upstairs and promptly
got lost. I arbitrarily walked into a room and
walked over to a young man in white wearing the
inevitable nameplate. I explained who I was
looking for. He didn’t know where the doctor’s
office was located so he started making inquiries
and then he took me to the right elevator, leading
to the right floor.
We eventually found the office. Children’s
toys were scattered on the floor. Through an
open door you could see a huge playroom with
standard park equipment. Instead of a ceiling a
glass skylight covered the roof so the room shifted
with the outdoor sunlight. The hospitalized chil-
dren were able to play there even during the bad
weather. Outpatient children could use the room
while waiting to see their doctor if the hospital-
ized children weren’t using the equipment.
The doctor brought the medication. The recep-
tionist supplied an eye dropper since Athelantis
wasn’t going to cooperate about anything.
The tranquilizer didn’t knock him out, but he
settled down enough to allow the x-ray techni-
cians to begin the shooting. I was allowed to stay
with him the whole time. We were all dressed in
those heavy aprons and gloves. Athelantis was
very annoyed, but didn’t physically lash out as
much as he would have without the tranquilizer.
They messed up a couple of them because they
didn’t want to mangle his head in a too-tight head
brace and he moved. But the whole procedure
was accomplished very quickly. I signed a release
with all the pertinent information and we went
back up to the pediatrician’s office to wait for my
friend and her baby.
Her doctor came out to thank us. He was lit-
tle and warm and very European. Athelantis was
exhausted and fell asleep in my arms. We finally
left without my friend because she was waiting
for her daughter to produce a urine specimen.
The whole experience at her hospital was
completely different from ours. You had more of
a sense of team effort. I didn’t feel any loss of
dignity for being a patient. My friend said that
maybe it was because her doctor had paved the
way for us. That’s probably true to a degree yet
everyone had been pleasant to us and seemed to
care. The doctor who directed us properly, the x-
ray technicians, the receptionist who took our
vital information . . . they hadn’t known who had
sent us or why we were there. They were all act-
ing in their normal way to the patient.
I was so excited by the hospital and relieved at
how simple the whole thing had been (and fast)
that I called my doctor immediately, and wrote a
letter of praise and jubilation to my friend’s doctor.
 As soon as the x-rays were ready he called for
my doctor’s address. The stats were sent to my
doctor. She took them to her hospital to discuss
them with their staff radiologist. I called the hos-
pital that had been treating Athelantis and asked
them if they wanted copies for his medical
records. I was told that they would only ask for
them if one of his doctors put in a request, but
that otherwise the medical-records department
couldn’t call for them. The next time we went to
the hand clinic I asked the doctors if they wanted
to send for them. They didn’t. The next time
Athelantis was admitted I asked the nurse to
speak to the neurological department and tell
them that his stats and x-rays were at the other
hospital if they wanted them. The nurse didn’t
tell me that the neuro department had requested
them. I assumed that despite the fact that
Athelantis hadn’t had neurological x-rays taken
at his own hospital in a year and a half, and that
his hospitals’ only expenditure to get the x-rays
would be one letter and a stamp, they were then
and are now disinterested.
(to be continued)