In China I saw the hardest things I’ve seen so far on the race. I’ve met children with distended tummies who act like they’re two when they are actually five years old, but their development has been stunted by malnutrition. I’ve seen countless men and women with open sores begging for money. These things make me stop and pray, but none of them have made to lean against a crib and cry.
I had the opportunity to visit two hospitals to tell the stories of two little girls as they fight for their lives. The organization I worked with takes “the least of these” – the children who will die if they do not receive emergency surgeries for things like seizures, cancer, tumors and heart conditions – and provides the surgeries and then works to get them adopted into real homes, in their home country or abroad.
The little girls were at two different hospitals. One was the most fancy hospital I’ve ever been to, nicer than anything I’ve visited in the states. The niceness of the hospital became a harsh juxtaposition to the discomfort I saw in little Ruby – you can not mask a child’s pain with balloons and stuffed animals at their bedside. The stomach surgery that was supposed to take an hour took 5 hours. The nannies and I walked and prayed then walked and prayed some more. It turned out there weren’t any complications from the surgery but that there were more surgeries ahead of her that we were not informed of. Regardless, those were the longest hours of my time on the race. When she came back from surgery and was starting to wake up I wanted her pain to stop with all I had. A half hour after Ruby was back safely in her room, I had to leave the hospital to go back home.
I was grossly unprepared for my second hospital visit. A few days later I went to the best children’s hospital in the country to visit a little girl who had been fighting for her life for over a month. Doctors had performed a hail-mary surgery to stop a tumor from growing and then removed the cancerous tumor, but there was a long road of chemo ahead. When we walked into the hospital, each of my senses was assaulted. I thought I had actually gone into King’s Cross train station in London. People were camped along the walls, sleeping on cardboard. One hallway reaked of urine. We had to wait at the door of the ward with dozens of other parents for a half hour before we could force our way in. Connie was in a room with 9 other critically ill children and their mother’s. I will never forget how Connie stared at me. She had seen more discomfort and pain in her short life than I have seen in all of mine. I watched mothers sponge bathe their children. I heard so many cries of discomfort as children wanted to move or play and were forced to stay in their beds. A little boy was allowed to stand up against one of the windows and slap at the glass. Nurses came and went feverishly.
The most moving part of the day was my time with two families who had become friends with Connie’s nanny. They have each been in the hospital for months with more surgeries to come for their little girls. They traveled a long way to be at this hospital and come from rural areas of the country and desperately need support to continue to stay in the hospital. My friend asked me if I was willing to take photos of the families to eventually share with a supporter who has a special heart for families in theses types of situations. We went to their small room. The little girls instantly started to cry when I entered. I am a foreigner with a large black camera and I happened to be wearing a long white cardigan….like a doctor’s white coat and that was an unfortunate coincidence. I sat down away from the little girls and did not look at them for a long time – when kids are afraid of a camera it’s best to help them forget you’re even there at all. I encouraged the parents to act like I wasn’t there. Soon the girls calmed down and I could take a few photos of them. We couldn’t stay long. One of the grandmas shook my hand and bowed profusely, thanking me for being there. The father stuck out is left hand to me and at first I thought he was reaching for my camera, but then my friend told me he needed to shake my hand. I shook his hand, and I can’t explain what was said between us and we looked into each other’s eyes while he held his little girl and her colostomy bag.
I am just a girl. Just a foreigner with a camera. But to that father, I was this connection to a world that could keep his little girl in the hospital getting the care she needs. I felt the weight of his stare to my core.
When we got back to Connie’s room I held her hand for a little while and cried. No one saw but I couldn’t contain all of the empathetic pain I felt for the families that surrounded me. Connie watched me for a while and then started to close her eyes and rest. Connie’s pre-chemo procedure that day went well, but once again I had to watch a child wake up from anesthesia in so much pain and tons of confusion while I was helpless beyond prayer.
I will never forget those days at the hospital. I say this almost every blog post, but He keeps opening my eyes. Those days He ripped open my heart, too.
