He came to find me while I was admitting another patient.
"What's wrong sweetie?" I asked him, as he pouted his little two-year-old pout. He poked at his G-tube and looked at me inquisitively. "What's that?" I asked. He broke into a big smile. "It's my belly!! Belly, belly, belly!" he sang out to me.
I couldn't help but smile right back.
I finished my physical exam on my other patient, who had blacked out from all the binge drinking she'd done and walked over to him. He lifted up his arms, so I picked him up. And with him on my hip, I finished writing orders while he played with my hair and my stethoscope around my neck. The nurses tried to take him from him, but each time he would just burrow further into my shoulder.
"All right kiddo, I gotta put you down to bed so I can finally start writing my notes."
I went to go review his chart. He was a DCFS neglect case and had been removed from his abusive mother who had stopped feeding him. I sighed and read through the rest of the history. He had a sister who had suffered much more traumatic abuse and was currently at a different hospital's ICU. His mom had stopped washing him, his G-tube was infected, and he has lice.
Wait.
He has lice.
What! The DCFS social worker had definitely forgotten to tell me that part.
This seemingly innocent baby who had been burrowing his head into my clothes, who had been playing with my hair and my things for the last two hours, had lice.
I wanted nothing more than to strip down and take a shower, but I still had six hours left of my shift. So what could I do? Nothing except put on a hair net and a yellow gown to prevent my probably already infected self from giving it to my other patients.
3 years ago
