Stop. Take a breath. Relax. Everything is going to be fine.” These thoughts interrupted the panic-stricken anxiety that raced through my head when the doctor told me Reina needed surgery.
For most parents, any time we take our infants or toddlers to the hospital, it’s an ordeal. No matter what Savvy and I do to prepare Reina, she dislikes doctor visits. Sure, she enjoys playing doctor with her toy stethoscope and thermometer; she even checks my blood pressure regularly and tells me if I need to go see a real doctor, but she hates going to the hospital. If we even drive in the direction of Beijing Family United Hospital, she says, “No hospital, no hospital.” And why shouldn’t it bother her? When an adult visits the doctor, more often than not, it ends with a prescription for some pills. But when a toddler trudges into that examination room, they know it is going to end with someone in a mask sticking a needle in their arm. Whee!
At 21 months, we took Reina to the hospital to determine why a little bump on her left cheek would not go away. We figured it was some kind of baby acne, but when it became slightly discolored, we headed to the doctor. The prognosis: a sebaceous cyst. Cysts are normally not a big deal and can often be ignored for years – decades even. However, since Reina’s appeared to be infected, the only course of action was to remove it. This would not have fazed me if she had been older, say, 25 years older. Reina and I were sitting with the pediatrician and suddenly Baba was the one feeling scared.
Discussing the matter with friends, I received heaps of opinions and advice. Not opinions about the diagnosis or procedure, which I researched extensively, but about how to act as the parent going into the hospital. Mental coaching. One mother cautioned, “Be strong and calm as you can. She’ll take her cue from you.” Another warned, “Reina can pick up any kind of discomfort or anxiety from you. Be positive but vigilant because it is her welfare that is most important.” It is all well and good that we parents reassure one another to be calm and strong for our children, but it is easier said than done. I watched in admiration as Savvy reassured Reina before the surgery and held her right up to the point that Reina was sedated and carried away by the nurses. Only then did my calm, supportive wife melt into my arms while hot tears poured down her cheeks. I had to be strong for my wife and my child.
It was heart-wrenching, but the greater personal toll came a couple days earlier when I took Reina to the hospital for a chest X-ray and blood test to make sure everything was okay for the surgery. Reina was a trooper until she had to lie down on the X-ray machine. The cold steel and mechanical whirring noises spooked her and she began to cry, making it necessary for me to hold her down. She was crying so hard she started shaking. Worse still, for the blood test, it took me and a nurse to hold Reina still enough while a second nurse took five agonizingly long minutes to extract 4cc of blood. The nurse was not slow – Reina’s blood was. Reina kept crying, “No, no, no, no, no,” punctuated by the occasional, “Baba?” as if to ask, “Why are you letting them do this to me, Daddy?” It was all I could do not to cry while singing to her. When it was over, Reina and I were both sweaty from the exertion.
Thankfully, the procedure went well. The only surprise the surgeon encountered was after the initial incision when a small, calcified deposit (a stone essentially) popped out from beneath the surface of the skin. Nearly a year later, the scar on Reina’s face is diminished and hardly noticeable. Just a faint reminder of one challenge we faced as a family with calm, strength, and an unhealthy dose of trepidation.
