This time last year: Royal Children's Hospital

Yesterday marked one year since the first time we walked through the doors of the Royal Children's Hospital, the place that we would spend so much time at during Thomasina's short 7 month life.

Before her birth, the hope was that her little misconfigured heart would be able to compensate for its strange construction to the extent that she would not need to undergo her first surgery until about 3 months.  In those final weeks of pregnancy the scans held hope that this would be the case and we prayed this would be the case.  In the hours after her birth, her oxygen saturation levels began to drop and over the next 24 hours it was confirmed she would need that first surgery to insert a shunt immediately.

On Sunday 11th March Thomasina made her first trip in the big wide world - in a Newborn Ambulance from Monash to Parkville - I liked to see it as her moving from my university world to Pete's.

The hours leading up to that move were tough.  You know all those stories of poor mother's with healthy babies having woeful days as their milk comes in: well imagine having that day sitting in an open special care baby unit with 8 babies and their one-on-one nursing care as a Chinese student couple say their long goodbyes to a baby born at what must have been no more than 20 weeks.  Imagine having that as they ready your baby for a trip across town for life saving surgery.  Imagine that as you sit through the obligatory tension of handover between 2 separate health providers, each seeming to want to prove they know best.

Sometimes I think that despite all that has happened, that morning was the saddest I've been.

 


The baby transport team were well organised though, asking many times if we had been to the Royal Children's before, explaining how to get to Koala ward where we would meet up again with this little person who had only been in our lives for just over 72 hours.  As I clutched the information brochure they gave me I reassured them that yes I had been to RCH before - deliberately not mentioning that it was in hard hat and hi-vis vest when it was a construction site.

I will never forget the feeling as we walked into RCH for the very first time, the first time the doors from the carpark opened onto the main street on a quite Sunday afternoon.  Immediately a sense of calm came over us, a feeling experienced everytime we entered that building.

A feeling I long for now.

Many who have been through the experience of a sick one at RCH, or know someone who has, speak of the medical and nursing care - you know world leaders, so talented, so caring and so on.  While this is true and was true for Thommy, it is the building that I treasure so much.

I am a bit of design freak - I love the pleasure given by good design like my Georg Jensen pieces, my Fink jug.  Despite having spent years in meetings  thinking about hospital design this time last year was the first time I had experienced how much difference a good building can make to a person at the lowest point of their life.

The natural light flooding so many spaces.

The gardens and parkland surrounding the hospital, being able to laze on the grass in autumnal sunshine.

The peace and calm that came from a policy that banned notices or signs being pinned on walls - removing that visual noise made for such calm

The beautiful family lounges on each floor that were so culturally important to the families of middle eastern origin who would gather their bringing the most amazing smelling food in beautiful containers.

The wonderful lighting on the wards that changed over the course of the day and felt more like a department store than a hospital.

Those wonderful green couches, so comfortable for the long days and nights

The cleverness of windows to parkland in the theatre suite, so although you are leaving your child for 5 hours on the operating table you can see there is still a day happening outside.

The wonderful playground outside where brothers can let off steam during the long weekends spent hanging around the hospital, the playground where I felt no need to be a helicopter parent and they got to climb more than they ever have before - afterall ED was directly below it.

The cafes with good coffee and the staff who got to know your order within a week.

And of course the wonderful Captains and the Starlight Room

It is true that we will be forever grateful to the staff of RCH for all they did to give us our beautiful Thomasina who was so well for so long.  From the wonderful Yves and his quietly stated ways, the many, many anaesthetists Thommy saw, all with their beautiful watches.  The nurses in their jellybean coloured scrubs, the cleaners who you got to know over time, the sweet orderlies who would come to accompany you to surgery.

I'm switched on enough to recognise that some of my love for that place now is about what it symbolises - a place where we spent so much time with Thomasina, a place where we felt so safe, where we had such hope.

I know that as the tears flow each time I drive down Flemington Road it is not all about missing the building, just like how sometimes know I will put Microshield on my hands as that smell reminds me of those times

This time last year I didn't realise how much a place could come to mean.

In writing this post, I went to look up some statistics from RCH.  I was stopped in my tracks when I came across this video - you will recognise some people in it.  I couldn't look any further for the statistics....

Royal Children's Hospital video