Seeing Yellow

I loathe yellow.

I haven't always hated yellow. I mean, I painted my kitchen yellow. I spent weeks trying to find the perfect warm, and cheery yellow for my kitchen. I thought I'd found it, spent all night, 9 months pregnant, up on a ladder, painting it. In the morning light it was was no longer warm and cheery. Instead it was an unnerving and harsh chartreuse. I cried (hormones). It was Sunday, and I wouldn't be able to get to the store to pick out another paint and repaint it until Monday, and I was already over-due and I knew I couldn't let my kitchen stay this color if I had to run off and have a baby. Luckily, Caleb was late, and I got to paint my kitchen the perfect shade of yellow. And if I can remember right, I love my kitchen. (Its been a while since I've seen it.)

What I'm saying is that my hating yellow is a recent development, over the last few weeks actually.

Yellow is NOT a sunny and cheery color. Yellow is a dreary, dark color.

Dylan is in isolation. When you are in isolation, everyone who comes into your room has to don a yellow gown. I have been wearing a yellow gown for almost two weeks now. It is NOT my color. Everyone I have seen, except Dylan, has been wearing yellow. Let me just tell you, yellow is nobody's color. Nobody looks good in yellow, especially under these harsh hospital lights.

Isolation stinks.

Dylan cannot leave our dark and tiny hospital room. There is a bright and cheery playroom just down the hall full of games, toys, video games, books, crafts, you name it. Dylan can't go there. He is banned from the play room, and they will not bring him anything from the playroom to play with because he has the cooties.

If he ever does get to leave our room, because of an exciting adventure to get an ultrasound, an MRI, or have surgery, they have to put a yellow gown on him to roll him down the hall. The yellow gown says "Look at me. I have cooties." Like a leper of old, having to wear a bell to warn innocent bystanders to run for the hills because there is a filthy leper in their midst.

Never mind that Dylan has been carrying this infection in his blood for over a year and hasn't infected anyone. Never mind that 2 out of every 10 people have this nasty bug just hanging out in their noses or on their bodies at any given time. Never mind that this nasty bug is everywhere - shopping carts, doorknobs, swing sets. Never mind that it has to be spread through the blood and someone can't catch it by being breathed on, coughed on, etc. Everything that Dylan's infectious disease doctors tell us about this bug, really doesn't confirm the "precautions" they are making. Don't get me wrong. I think they need to take precautions, of course, to not spread the disease, but there are so many holes. They are ridiculously precautious in some ways, and not in more obvious ways. And in the end, they just make it extra hard on the poor kids who are in isolation.

Do you remember ever being accused of having cooties in school. I do and it was no fun. Humiliating. Embarrassing.

That how this yellow gown feels, like being branded with a scarlet letter.

Isolation feels like solitary confinement, and try as I might I really can't think of the crime that sweet little kid of mine committed.

Before his second surgery he was trying to do his physical therapy in the confines of his room with his walker. He had to make about twenty laps back and forth in the tiny track between his bed and the door. Why the heck couldn't he just walk down the hall? Do you really think he was going to infect someone just schuffling down the hall? He quit after 20 mini-laps in his bedroom, I believe, out of sheer boredom. I'm sure it would have been much more motivating to have him make it to the end of the hallway.

Cootie case in point: Last night he had had a long nap and had missed dinner. It was about 10pm when he woke up and was hungry. His taquitos were cold on his dinner tray, and taquitos are just not good cold, agreed? So I carried the covered plate out of the room and asked someone to throw the taquitos into the microwave for a minute. They all looked at me like I, well, like I had cooties. "No, we can't." I knew they had a microwave, and were happy, usually, to reheat things for patients - unless you were wearing yellow. "Nothing comes out of the isolation room." That is the policy. They couldn't reheat Dylan's dinner because it had been in an isolation room. What? Dylan had never touched the food, the plate, or the entire tray, but suddenly it had cooties. I explained this to them. Again with the policy, "Nothing comes out of the isolation room." Strange, because I came out of the isolation room, and so do all the finished food trays, I assume, because I didn't see them piling up in the corner. I have seen a lot of stuff leave the isolation room, cooties or no. But they refused to reheat the cootified taquitos in the community microwave. "OK, then can you please just order him some more taquitos?" "No, the kitchen is closed." I was ready to blow. It doesn't take a lot these days. When my sick kid finally wants to eat some taquitos, I feel obligated to get him what he wants. To heck with the cooties! I begged and pleaded his case. They refused and generously offered to toss some jello into the cootie room. I stormed back into the cootie room and slammed the cootie door! That's why I hate yellow. He who wears yellow is treated as a second class citizen.

But I have watched my child battle these cooties. I have seen the pure torture he has been put through. He has been so brave and so strong. I don't think someone wearing yellow should be treated like they are wearing a scarlet letter, but a red badge of courage. Kids like Dylan, and parents like myself, have been through heck, and anyone in yellow should be treated with extra love and attention, not like they have cooties. Hot taquitos for all!

I'll be happy to never wear yellow again.