A Special Note: “Waiting to see my Dad…”

Below is a story that my son wrote for school, he agreed for me to post it on this blog.

“It’s November. The temperature is –25°C plus windchill. It’s 3:00 pm. My grandfather and I dropped off my mother and grandmother.

We parked in P1. We walked into the Royal Victoria Hospital, sanitized our hands and proceeded to the coffee shop, then to the elevator. “Ding!” went the elevator as we arrived on the 5th floor of S pavilion.

This is the surgery and ICU, or Intensive Care Unit, floor. We waited for two hours, my grandfather and I ate supper, we returned and waited another three more hours.

The wait was excruciating, I was hungry, I was out of cash and we had no entertainment other than my DSi and boring French TV.  We finally got news.

The surgery was a complete success and it had ended five hours before. We went to see my father. “Boop! Boop!” went the monitors, in every block the first thing you would notice is the tube proceeding from underneath the blanket leading to a large tank where the blood was being drained to.

Then you would notice the tube going down the person’s throat, leading to the lungs.

There was the smell of latex, alcohol scented sanitizer and medication was in the air.

I only felt the slightest bit comfortable when my father woke, I was the first person he saw.

We only left around 10:30 pm. We got home at 11:00.”

Matt Hamelin