Our youngest son, Scott, was 2 years old in January of 1982,when he came down with what proved to be a bad case of bronchitis. What made it worse was that I got sick around the same time probably from the same thing that got him sick. Our doctor decided he would be better off in the hospital where he could be monitored closer than he could at home.
Scott was not the best patient in the children’s ward at St.Joseph’s Hospital in Hazleton, but then I doubt that many children of that age would be. He wouldn’t stop crying and we had to take turns staying with him overnight the first few nights and even the bubble they put over the cribs babies are in was hard pressed to hold him. He especially hated the medicine cart. We don’t know if he could hear it, which was likely, or if he just could sense when it was due. He would either want to be in the toy room or walked in the hall when the cart was due to arrive.
He didn’t like the respiratory therapy sessions either. They put a mask over his face and he would breathe in oxygen that bubbled through medicine that was placed in a holder on the mask. Such masks can make some people claustrophobic so that reaction did not surprise us at all. But he would stay still for one respiratory technician and do exactly what the man told him and not give him any problems. It took me a while to determine out why he would behave for this man and for few others entrusted with his care. The technician in question was black and was the first black person Scott had ever seen.
I thanked him for having such a good rapport with Scott and then gave him what I thought was the reason.