Padua Children’s Ward, at the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford, Kent (UK), exudes a sense of permanence. There is a parents’ room with comfy sofa, a TV, fridge, microwave, kettle and sink. In the early evening parents are playing with their children in the side rooms, some with the radio on softly in the background. A couple of hours later the little ones are asleep and all is quiet. The place feels unhurried – to me anyway; staff are friendly and the other parents respectful. For a place that is transient by its very nature, the ward has been made to feel like a home of sorts.
While I worked as a microbiologist at London’s Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital (GOSH), I never saw the wards. I saw plenty of little patients in lifts and corridors as I moved between labs in my white coat. As GOSH takes only the severest cases, I knew that every adult I passed who wasn’t staff was the parent of a seriouly ill child. This awareness was enough to sober me during my daily rounds.
So it was also a sobering experience bringing my son to Padua Ward two days ago. We were assigned a “cubicle”, actually a tiny room with just one bed. On our way there we passed a woman in tears outside another room where a baby squalled. “She’s been like this for hours,” she explained to a nurse who was doing her best to comfort her. Behind this ward’s calm façade lies the hidden drama of sick children, of parents condemned to spent long periods here, waiting, worrying, suffering.
I felt humbled as my son began to rally. With his headache, fever, weakness and dehydration from nearly 24 hours of vomiting, he really did look terrible. But as the time passed and he continued to keep his fluids down, I knew he was improving, and that we’d be home later that night.
