While in the bank drive-thru the other day, I was reminded of my ever-present short comings in the patience department. The driver in front of me was already at the window, and continued to talk with the teller inside even after the metal drawer had opened and closed not once, but twice. Even though I wasn't in a particular hurry, I found myself feeling agitated.
Patience has never been my strong suit. It's always been a matter of prayer and half-hearted discipline, and when people comment on how patient I am, I usually respond with, "No, I'm just tired." Which is kind of a true statement; not often physically tired, but mentally drained and tired of arguing with and explaining myself to my kids, tired of working - it feels like against - a system when what I want is to work with the system.
During a pull-myself-up-by-the-bootstraps phase a few years ago, I decided to dig in and work at developing more patience. My prayers and Bible study revolved around it, and I tried to be more aware of my attitude with the kids, especially. The timing is blurry to me now, but around that time - months before or after - we took a placement for three siblings.
At the time we had in our family: Fred, Eli, and Evan, and two brothers - Raymond and Deante. The ages of these five boys were: 8, 7, 5, 3 and 2 years old. The three siblings were two sisters and a little brother, named Dante (try keeping track of Deante and Dante for a bit.) As interesting as that name combination seemed to me, the name of the one sister really struck me - the older sister, age 7, was Patience. Her little sister, age 5, was Nicole.
These kids came to us because their dad did not have health insurance for them - period. That's all we were told and it certainly seemed that the kids were well-adjusted: understood limits, responded to discipline, played well with our kids. Little Dante was more fearful since he was not quite 2 years old and didn't understand what was going on, but after a few days he was fitting in and we had the new normal going on.
A few days into the placement, we noticed that Patience was struggling with one aspect of her health and while I had one of the boys to the doctor for a check-up, I took Patience along hoping that they would squeeze in a quick look at her "off the record" since the state health insurance for the kids had not kicked in yet. (A side note here: our pediatrician's office has been phenomenal to work with since we began fostering; even though they are usually technically 'closed' to new patients with medicare, they will take any kids that come to our family and they've seen a number of kids on the side like in this situation.)
It took the pediatrician a few minutes before he looked at me and said something like: "Mrs. Heisey, you need to get this child down to CHOP straight from here." And I said something like, "Huh?!" Stan was at work, I think my mom was at home with the other kids, and this kid had no health insurance. So I went home, filled in my mom, called Stan and he came home. We contacted the agency and the county, and Patience and I headed to CHOP.
Patience was admitted almost immediately and underwent a series of tests and procedures. For part of this time, the case workers were at the hospital with us to help answer the on-going questions for which I had no answers since I had only known Patience for a week and we had been given very little family information. The results of the testing determined that the situation was definitely treatable, and me being totally medically ignorant assumed that that meant we would get a prescription and get home in time for the bed-time routine.
Enter patience (with a lowercase 'p'). Sure, that whole day had taken some patience what with having to rearrange our schedule, have Stan come home from work, find my way to CHOP (I am also directionally challenged), try to comfort a child who hardly knew me, deal with questions for which I had no answers, and try to understand medical terms. But after all that, we could not go home. Patience was given a bed, and I a make-shift cot-type thing, in a room for the night. We had not planned for an over-nighter; I had no extra clothes for either of us, no comfort items for her, no way to take out and store my contacts.
It turns out, I didn't have to worry about taking out my contacts since I didn't sleep. Between Patience being uncomfortable (she was having some procedures continue throughout the night) and scared, and the addition of our roommate at around two in the morning, who had time to try to get comfortable on that plastic covered, too-short cot-bed. Sometime during the next day, Patience was discharged with a list of directions for us to follow.
As I mentioned earlier, I am fully medically incompetent; taking temperatures and administering cold medicine is about as far as I go. So... more patience as I cared for Patience at home. The fact that she did not understand the need for all the things that we had to do, or what could happen if we didn't, was also trying as I attempted to explain in little girl terms what I barely understood myself. Thankfully, her health did improve, her daddy secured insurance for all the kids, and Patience, Nicole, and Dante were reunified with their family after a few weeks with us. And I was again reminded to be thoughtful when praying because God is faithful in providing what I need - sometimes in ways that I can't help but notice.
No comments:
Post a Comment