A friend in hospital

Today after work, I went to the National University Hospital (NUH) to visit F who had been hospitalised in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) since Monday. (F is a 13 year-old boy whom I had gotten to know through Club Rainbow.) When I reached the hospital, I realised that he had just been transferred out of ICU into an ordinary children's ward. F was sitting quietly in bed, his family by his side. He had an paper ID-tag wrapped around his right wrist, an intravenous drip inserted into his left hand, a device for measuring his pulse clamped onto one finger, and a long tube running from his nostrils to some machine by his bed. It had been a tiring day for F; he had spent most of the day undergoing medical tests, scans and check-ups. Although F was physically quite weak, he seemed rather alert. That was very encouraging.

I spoke with his mum briefly. Apparently, F had caught the flu bug over the weekend, but developed complications later on. She told me that the diagnosis didn't seem too good. F had been born with a certain medical condition, and after this bout of flu and associated complications, his medical condition would probably have been irreversibly worsened. "We know he won't live very long, and we have always been trying to pamper him as much as we can while we can," I was told. "Now, it just means we have to try harder."

I did my best to fight back the tears. It wasn't good to cry in front of F, nor in front of his family. Goodness knows how much they have had to go through already! When I left NUH, I became suddenly aware of how casually and liberally F's parents had used complex medical jargons (names of medical procedures, medications, human anatomy, etc) when talking with me. The reason for that was obvious, and the more I thought about it, the sadder I felt. I couldn't help it but cried at some point on my way home.