Hope Springs Eternal

Every so often in my line of work I come across someone who makes me stop and really think about my life. One time it was the 40 something parents who were having their newborn taken away by child protective services for an undetermined amount of time because the mother had tested positive for drugs. Another it was a beautiful baby that was being given up for adoption, the mother was just a teenager who had a nasty drug habit. Then there was the couple who had been married for 19 years and told early in their marriage that they would never be able to conceive or the mom who only had one working ovary (and only 50% at that) and her husband had a very low sperm count who after 10 years of marriage were shocked and elated to have a baby girl. The baby in NICU that was born with no stomach muscles. All of these experiences have made me thankful for the healthy children I have and many times made me thankful for the life I have. Out of the hundreds and hundreds of babies I have photoed I remember these people, most everyone else is just lost in the masses of faces I see each week, but these I remember. Today I met another face I'll remember for a while - maybe even forever.

I had three people on my list who were discharges for today. I got to my last one and there was an odd sign on the door saying not to use that door. What? I tracked down the nurse who was assigned that patient for the scoop. The patient was in an isolation room and I would have to go through the isolation door so I could gown up and glove up before entering then scrub up when I leave. One of the other nurses asked why, if she had some thing infectious (this is actually not that uncommon in NICU - sometimes babies get certain bacteria and we have to gown up in addition to our gloves then wipe down the cart to not spread the bacteria to well babies). The answer was one I didn't expect. The mom has HIV. The nurses talked back and forth for a moment as I thought about that. HIV. I immediately got a picture of what kind of woman this must be. I figured the mom wouldn't want pictures, she was probably low income, had a drug problem, a sleazy type woman... What other kind of woman would be having a baby while HIV infected? When I was finally able to go into the room what I saw was vastly different than what I had pictured. She was a painfully thin African woman. She looked very tired but wanted pictures of her brand new baby and she even knew what she wanted to order. I immediately was embarrassed by how I had prejudged her just by hearing HIV. It was hard to understand her because she had a very thick accent but I got the message of when she wanted me to come back and take the pictures and that she wasn't feeling very well at the moment. When I returned mom was feeling better but very tired, the baby was in the nursery because of her exhaustion so we rescheduled for tomorrow as she was being held for an extra day until she was better. She was a very nice woman, she thanked me and called me sweetie in her musical lilting voice when I left. I was touched by her optimism despite her HIV status. I don't know if I would be quite so optimistic in the same situation, I might be very resentful to know that I would probably not live to see my child become an adult or guilt and fear that I may have passed along the virus to my infant while in utero. She had none of that. She had hope. My heart aches for her situation, yet her optimism was contagious and I couldn't help feel her hope also. My life was put in perspective in those 5 minutes.