"Today is Tuesday" read the hospital's doormat on the morning of Oliver's adenoidectomy. This was the last thing the hospital got right for a while--entering his medical history into the wrong patient's file, starting surgery two hours late so that Oliver was still conscious having missed breakfast and lunch, leaving me waiting for more than an hour after the operation while other parents were told their kids' surgeries had gone fine until I forced my way into the O.R. and learned that Oliver had gagged and begun choking under anaesthesia and that his doctor had been forced to paralyze the muscles in his neck, intubate him, and do his breathing for him for about ten minutes.
The doctor, an old man whose bedside manner consists of saying things like, "Ninety-nine bananas," while looking in kids' ears (much better is Oliver's allergist who asks Oliver's permission to look for butterflies in his ears), was still ashen and shaken when I finally spoke to him.
The surgery worked wonders and Oliver can now breathe and hear freely. His sense of humor has sharpened, too. "Does N-O spell yes?" he says.
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