>Our day with Amigo at the big clinic/hospital could have been illustrated in pictures. The parking garage; it’s so huge and complex. Construction cranes; there’s always construction on the medical campus somewhere. The elevators, the skywalk, the never-ending hallways that all seem to look alike. Thank goodness for good signage, or I would have been lost several times. Somehow, with my own child under anesthesia getting major tests to find out why his pain won’t go away, the motherly mind was a bit too preoccupied to notice landmarks.
The waiting room overlooked a helicopter pad if we looked up, and emergency room parking lot if we looked down. The most dramatic event, however, featured the window washing crew maneuvering their scaffolding across the lot. It would have made a decent picture if I’d had a zoom lens, but I only had my phone’s camera.

Lunch at midafternoon in the complex’s dining hall: husband had soup and salad, I had a chicken taco stuffed potato. We used our “guest passes” as parents of a patient to get a small discount. If I’d taken pictures here, they would have illustrated the endless hallways to get there or the private phone booth tucked into the bathroom hallway.

A long way from the days of no cell phone, no nothing, the hospital had wi-fi access in the recovery and waiting rooms. Husband did some geneology research. I updated my family and coworkers of our progress by way of email, twittered and plurked a bit to pass the time in between correcting the mountain of school papers in my bag.

The doctor (student? resident? fellow?) saw me correcting math papers and commented that she had found fractions hard in fourth grade. (My random thought: she must have mastered math eventually to go on through the rigorous advanced chemistry of undergrad programs and medical school!) She shared the photos of Amigo’s innards and explained them well. Don’t worry, squeamish readers, I won’t post them.

As Amigo ate his post-op popsicle and gradually came out of his post-anesthesia stupor, we packed our bags and gathered our after care instructions. We piled our groggy teenager into a wheelchair, headed back through the labyrinth of elevators and skywalk and parking garage, then tucked him into the backseat of our Saturn with a pillow and snuggly blanket for the ride home.

That’s where I took my one and only picture.

Yes, that’s a wheelchair corral, like the cart corrals at the grocery store. We parked Amigo’s borrowed chair, tucked him in, and hit the road, leaving the chair for the next family who would need it.