"Don't be stricken, go to hospital." This sentence was squeezed from the mouth of one of the owners with dry eyes. What followed was a howl. On the tearful cheeks, the two brooks instantly turned into waterfalls, and tears slid on the placket. The lady slowly got up and walked out of the doctor's office. The door closed heavily behind her slim figure. The remaining two pairs of eyes in the
office looked at each other and quickly separated. The man who said "be in the hospital" broke the silence again: "She can't get out of the pain! We have nothing to do with the child. She is a very strong woman, always asking too much, but the child's inborn developmental problems can't let her go. The meaning of..." The introduction should have been long, but after he glanced at his watch tiredly, he finished it hastily, thanked me politely, and left. In the following months, I never saw him again. After
was hospitalized, she was not calm, she kicked the door of the ward that closed her hard, and then lay exhausted on the smooth and cool ground. Two sturdy nurses carried her back to the bed and replaced her dusty shirt with loose and soft hospital gowns. She kicked her feet and threw the plush slippers aside, then stopped struggling, lying on her back on the bed, letting tears flow freely. I went to see her, she didn't tell me anything, I walked away silently.
7:30 in the morning a week later, the sky is completely bright. The heating in the ward dried her tears all night. Her bloodshot eyes were wrapped in red and swollen eyelids, full of resentment and helplessness. After I said good morning, I asked her if she would like to talk about herself. I don't know if it is because of the sunlight or the state has indeed changed. Her emotions seem to be more stable. The language squeezed out of her dry mouth was also dry and stagnant, but clearly organized. In the words, I can feel her pride.
She is an excellent person. She graduated from a prestigious college and worked in a top accounting firm. She is still one of the best among her colleagues. She owned her own apartment in a prime location in Beijing very early. However, her sense of pride disappeared without a trace from the day her son was born three years ago.
son turned out to be a mentally disabled child! In the days that followed, her eyes were often full of anger, but more of them were tears. Slowly, she felt that everything lost its color, and she couldn't see joy and joy. She often had to raise her head to prevent the tears from overflowing. Even if one day the child tried very hard to call out "mother", it could hardly arouse her joy.
One day at noon, the child knocked over the table clumsily in the kindergarten and shouted out of control. She had to take time off to pick up the child. She drove the child and did not go home, but circled around the house. It wasn't until the traffic became denser and denser that she eventually blocked the way she continued to go on, that she was unwilling to park the car to the basement and dragged the child up the elevator. The elevator arrived and the door opened. She wiped her tears with her left hand, and dragged the child out of the elevator with her right hand. Passing the familiar door, she went straight to the window at the end of the corridor.
She rubbed her eyes again, letting her eyeshadow become a ball on her face, then hugged the noisy child on the window sill, and then kicked off her high heels and climbed onto the window sill.
"It's here!" she thought to herself, holding the child out of the window, and stepping out one of her feet. The child murmured "Mom" suddenly, and pulled her gaze back to her son's slightly hollow eyes. She did not dare to look again, did not dare to look at the congested traffic, did not dare to look at the green space downstairs, let alone look at this familiar eyebrow.
then was in a trance, she felt that she was grabbed by a few hands, and she was pulled down from the window sill. She felt the coldness of the ground, and the child's screams and cry came from her ears. After she finished speaking, she returned to her hospital bed and lay silently.
She doesn't resist the drugs to improve depression, and she always takes them very cooperatively.
On the third day, I took a rest after the night shift and did not go to the rounds.
On the fourth day, she calmed down a lot and her eyelids had disappeared. This time, she talked about her various qualities to be strong and competitive. She always hopes that the child canShe is as good as her, but her children's performance always makes her feel sad. When she saw the child, she seemed to see the ridicule of others. Living in the ward now makes her relax. In the few days after
, we just chatted briefly, and no longer actively touched on this topic. After another week, Beijing ushered in a snow. Medications to improve depression started to work, and she talked more about her situation. Although she didn't talk about children any more, she always sat alone by the window, quietly watching the children on the school playground downstairs.
For a few days, she often asked me whether there is a medical technique that can help my child reverse developmental delay. I couldn't give her a definite answer, and the light in her eyes became dim again. A few times, I seemed to see the tears lingering in her eyes, but after all, none of them fell.
One afternoon after the snow fell, the thin sunlight faded, and scattered snowflakes fell. Instead of sitting by the window as usual, she searched around in the ward with her eyes, and finally found me at the nurse's station. She told me about her emotional improvement in the past few weeks and her eyes became clear. She didn't ask how to reverse the developmental delay, but simply said that she couldn't change the reality, she could only change herself.
Beijing has entered the deep winter, and the cold wind swept all the pedestrians into the heated houses. An old woman wrapped in a down coat, leading a child to see her. Across the glass of the ward, I saw her and the child dancing and talking, talking and laughing, with kindness in their clear eyes. Talking and smiling, she unknowingly had a few more crystal teardrops on the corners of her eyes, dripping onto the light blue hospital gown.
She picked up the child, walked slowly to the window, pointed at the empty playground not far away, and said something to the child. The child didn't seem to be listening, and turned his head to the other side. When the child turned his head, I saw eyebrows almost identical to hers, but the eyes were a little hollow. The eyes behind the child were full of tears, but with firmness and love.
This is an impressive patient. She finally reached a reconciliation with her pride and accepted the reality of her child suffering from intellectual disability. Almost every mother has suffered different degrees of setbacks in the process of parenting, and mothers with special children have to bear more. In reality, a small number of such mothers would choose to take their children to commit suicide when suffering from depression. More mothers, with unimaginable pressure to accept and care for their children, with their own tenacity and medical help, are struggling to get out of the quagmire of depression. When you look directly into their eyes, you can feel this power in their firm eyes.
Author: Beijing Huilongguan Hospital, Zhu Yu
Source: "narrative medicine"
planning: Tan Jia Yu Yun West
ANCHOR: Luan Siu Lin
Editor: Lu Yimin
