Upside My Head (Pay Attention Now): Helping Hands

Every time we pass an ambulance from Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC), whether or not its sirens are on, my five-year-old granddaughter exclaims, "There goes my ambulance!" Or if we pass the hospital, she says with pride, "There goes my hospital!"

It's the colorful four-hands HCMC logo she recognizes.

Her sense of ownership of HCMC is understandable. Last summer, the doctors, residents, students, nurses, and specialists that make those HCMC hands come to life saved her life.

Here's how the story read in various news accounts:

"Today, a four-year old girl fell from a third floor window in her north Minneapolis apartment and was taken to HCMC for treatment. Her injuries are not life threatening and authorities say it was a tragic accident."

That was my family being splashed across the headlines, reduced to a sound bite.

Here's what happened, non sound-bite version:

I couldn't understand my daughter through the hysterical sobs and screaming coming through my cell phone, but I knew something was desperately wrong. Finally, she choked out, "SHE FELL!!!! MY BABY FELL OUT OF HER WINDOW!!!! WE'RE IN THE AMBULANCE ON THE WAY TO THE HOSPITAL!!!! SHE'S HURT REALLY BAD!!!! COME FAST!!!"

I don't remember my crazed, terrifying drive to the hospital, nor where I left my car.

To be precise, the bedroom window from which she fell was in a newer north Minneapolis apartment building, three floors up, but 40 feet away from the pavement below. Pavement where my grandchild landed, having somehow fallen through the screen on that hot summer night. Her mom, in the next room cooking supper, heard the screams and ran to find the open window, looked out, and saw her daughter screaming on the ground below.

I can't imagine.

Within minutes, they were in an ambulance on their way to HCMC. I remember racing through the ER doors, grabbing hold of my sobbing daughter, who was covered with her daughter's blood. We waited in a room with a hospital chaplain until a doctor came for us and told us she was stable but badly hurt.

Miraculously, she had arrived at the ER alert, and was talking to the doctors, telling them where she hurt. A very good sign, they said. She had a major broken bone in her leg, multiple fractures to her face, a bruised lung and heart, but no immediate evidence of brain injury. She was being moved to the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), the place we would call home for the next month.

We got to see her a few hours later. That lively bundle of life was sedated, breathing tubes in her mouth, and IV's stuck into her everywhere, or so it seemed. Her face was bruised, scraped, and swollen almost beyond recognition. Her leg was in the first of several casts.

Over the course of the next four weeks we stayed with her day and night. I watched teams of specialists care for her, one team per injury. She had surgeries, MRI's, CAT scans, x-rays, blood work and lots and lots of drugs. The amazing PICU doctors and nurses coordinated all of her care.

But as her leg, face, and heart healed (her brain was fine all along), her bruised lungs got worse. We worried (so did they). She had to stay in that drug-induced coma until her lungs could breathe on their own. She got an infection. It was taking too long. But finally, with some serious medical strategy and the willful spirit of a girl determined to heal, she improved. The chest x-rays got clearer. Some number on a monitor about blood to oxygen ratio was moving to a life-sustaining level.

Nearly four weeks after her fall, they finally removed her breathing tubes, and she kept breathing (insert large, collective sign of relief). Then, in slow increments, they reduced the heavy narcotics that had kept her unconscious and she was allowed to "wake up."

A week later she was discharged. Diagnosis: full recovery.

Nearly ten months later she is back on the block. She's learning to ride her bike without training wheels (helmet on, of course), beginning to read and spell, and is ready and raring to go to kindergarten next fall. She and her mom thankfully moved to a first floor apartment. Life has returned to our own private "new normal" and let me assure you, it is oh so very sweet.

So back to the four hands. Those HCMC helping hands. My point in telling this story is this: HCMC, one of the nation's foremost level one trauma centers, also serves more poor people than any other hospital in the state. Its tagline says, "Every life matters." But it's not a marketing gimmick. They mean it.

My daughter works full time, but her income is so low that my grandchild is eligible for Medical Assistance (MA), which mostly paid the bills. What this means is that you and me, through our tax dollars, were in some way part of the team that saved her life. But understand this: had she been rushed to the ER uninsured, HCMC would have treated her - medically and figuratively - in exactly the same way. That takes state and federal dollars, too. Every life matters.

During those terrifying weeks in the PICU and at all those visits to specialty clinics in the months that followed, I saw the "world" at HCMC. I observed each and every patient being treated with respect and surely being offered the best medical care available.

So this year as I watched the debates surrounding funding for health care (especially for the poor) both here in Minnesota and in Congress, and the virulent attacks on President Obama and supporters of his health care reform plan, I had to wonder what to make of us, we the people. Do we believe one life is less deserving than another? Should only the wealthy get decent medical care? Why is this a debate at all? In these financial hard times, all but the very rich are struggling. But among us all, there is plenty to go around. Shouldn't our priorities be to first help out those in greatest need? To make sure all get a seat at the health care table? Where is our common decency and good will?

Let me ask the naysayers this: Is my grandchild's life worth less than yours?