Wednesday – The Lazarus Child
Jan. 19th, 2011 11:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermore.
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Kourtney’s mother stopped by the office the other day with Kourtney’s 2 year old son in tow. While he was her, she took him through the cubicles and offices to show him off. One of the women in accounting still had balloons up in her cube from her birthday the week before (the tradition in the office is to decorate the workspace of each employee on their birthday), and Kourtney's son scored a blue balloon and a red balloon from her. He was delighted.
"What do you have there?" I asked him.
"Bah-LOON!" he answered. This was a man who had obviously just mastered the art of saying multi-syllable words, and he acted proud to show off his verbal dexterity.
"Cool!" I said. Because it seemed like the thing to do (even though we had just met seconds before) I picked him up and spun him around, which made him throw back his head and giggle. It was a beautiful sound, and it was hard to believe that it came from a little boy who had died a few weeks before.
I heard about him on my first day, when two of my new coworkers were discussing that the child of one of the Customer Service Reps had turned blue and been rushed to the hospital over the weekend. She was in her first year of employment with the company and used all 5 of her Paid Time Off days down at Texas Children’s Hospital with her son. A few weeks later, his mother was down by my cube talking to Kat, who sits behind me.
"He was dead for 15 seconds," Kourtney said. He was at home with his mother and older brother when he suddenly stopped breathing. One minute he was fine, the next his lips were turning purple. His mother called 911 and began CPR on him. It was at the emergency room at Texas Children’s that his breathing and his heart came to a complete stop. “They were pushing me out of the room while they were pushing the crash cart in,” she said. They got him back, and admitted him for observation and testing, which found nothing wrong with him.
"They tested him for everything they could think of," Kourtney said, "and he’s normal. They don’t know why it happened." She shrugged her shoulders. She is a tough-looking young woman who looks like she probably played a mean game of solfball growing up, and could probably still kick some butt and whatever game she wanted to play now.
The toddler’s only complaint about the whole experience was the sore throat he got from having a tube forced down it. He didn’t like that and has developed a general distrust of medical personnel because of it. When she had to take him back in for a follow-up visit, he asked if they were going to hurt him again. She promised him that they wouldn’t, but she said he seemed skeptical.
When I met him the other day, I was happy to see that he was not blue at all, and he didn’t look like he had ever been. He is one of those children where of mixed black and white heritage who is gold-colored from the curls on his head to the tips of his little toes. How could anyone resist picking him up and spinning him around to make him laugh? I sure couldn’t. The sound of a child’s laughter is as golden to me as the little boy himself.
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.
.
Kourtney’s mother stopped by the office the other day with Kourtney’s 2 year old son in tow. While he was her, she took him through the cubicles and offices to show him off. One of the women in accounting still had balloons up in her cube from her birthday the week before (the tradition in the office is to decorate the workspace of each employee on their birthday), and Kourtney's son scored a blue balloon and a red balloon from her. He was delighted.
"What do you have there?" I asked him.
"Bah-LOON!" he answered. This was a man who had obviously just mastered the art of saying multi-syllable words, and he acted proud to show off his verbal dexterity.
"Cool!" I said. Because it seemed like the thing to do (even though we had just met seconds before) I picked him up and spun him around, which made him throw back his head and giggle. It was a beautiful sound, and it was hard to believe that it came from a little boy who had died a few weeks before.
I heard about him on my first day, when two of my new coworkers were discussing that the child of one of the Customer Service Reps had turned blue and been rushed to the hospital over the weekend. She was in her first year of employment with the company and used all 5 of her Paid Time Off days down at Texas Children’s Hospital with her son. A few weeks later, his mother was down by my cube talking to Kat, who sits behind me.
"He was dead for 15 seconds," Kourtney said. He was at home with his mother and older brother when he suddenly stopped breathing. One minute he was fine, the next his lips were turning purple. His mother called 911 and began CPR on him. It was at the emergency room at Texas Children’s that his breathing and his heart came to a complete stop. “They were pushing me out of the room while they were pushing the crash cart in,” she said. They got him back, and admitted him for observation and testing, which found nothing wrong with him.
"They tested him for everything they could think of," Kourtney said, "and he’s normal. They don’t know why it happened." She shrugged her shoulders. She is a tough-looking young woman who looks like she probably played a mean game of solfball growing up, and could probably still kick some butt and whatever game she wanted to play now.
The toddler’s only complaint about the whole experience was the sore throat he got from having a tube forced down it. He didn’t like that and has developed a general distrust of medical personnel because of it. When she had to take him back in for a follow-up visit, he asked if they were going to hurt him again. She promised him that they wouldn’t, but she said he seemed skeptical.
When I met him the other day, I was happy to see that he was not blue at all, and he didn’t look like he had ever been. He is one of those children where of mixed black and white heritage who is gold-colored from the curls on his head to the tips of his little toes. How could anyone resist picking him up and spinning him around to make him laugh? I sure couldn’t. The sound of a child’s laughter is as golden to me as the little boy himself.
