today like every other day here, leaves me exhausted. This was the final clinical day of the trip, where 20 some odd towering Caucasian strangers turn the surgical ward of the National Pediatrics Hospital into a glorified petting zoo. But as with everything else on this trip, this country, and apparently this world, the darkness is punctuated - but never fully- by tiny filaments of light. Today I saw 20 kids given an opportunity for a better life, maybe. I could look at each child and feel my heart cracking like giant warm egg, but then I'd imagine all the shadows behind their being there and seeing us, the thousands of kids with the same or worse deformities and circumstances, doomed by luck, by birth, by geography, wealth, and maybe fate. For every ear reconstruction done how many remain undone? How many other procedures precluded by the use of finite funds, time, training, will, and political maneuvering? How many of those kids were there because of their parents' connections, positions, or dollars? And why wouldn't I do the same thing given their circumstances?
anyway, the reason for the title of the post is that I'd like to tell a parable by way of a brief reference to the wonderful Pixar movie Up!. Today, as the kids were lined up to see us for the last time, I walked out of the clinic, through the hospital doors, out the gate, and into the little road-side shop selling knickknacks, snacks, and some commonly needed medical supplies. I spent about 10 dollars buying 20 huge balloons: animals, knock-off disney character likenesses, and some of the other unidentifiable blobs of bobbing color that kids enjoy purely up until the age of 9. I carried, and was almost carried by, the balloon animal heard into the wards and gave every kid a choice of balloon. I felt and looked like the house in Up!.
I gave the children balloons knowing that for 5 minutes or so they would enjoy them fully, until losing, popping, trading, losing interest in, or in any number of ways ending them and the moment. I also thought about the staff and parents having to contend with flying unicorns in their way during rounds, being sucked into the ceiling fans, stolen, fought for, cried about. And lastly I thought about myself. Was I buying them for the kids? For the photo op? Maybe for the canned emotional cue of a laughing child to make my and my team's presence a bit more justified with having to agonize over the consequences for even just a few seconds or minutes. Was it worth it, or right, or good? Did it matter? I honestly don't know. But for a moment or three, I tried to forget about myself. Whether the joyful consequences of that abdication outweigh the probable imposition on others, is a question that I'm desperately trying to answer.
2 comments:
The children/parents will remember it as good.
It is hard to do good, and the effort is frustrating, especially to someone like you who can see the huge discrepency between the way things are and the way things should be. But keep hoping and trusting and letting your heart crack open like an egg, Greg.
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