Exhaustion is my excuse for being so slow to post this week. Livia is going through a difficult period of waking up, furious every night between eleven and two o'clock, and it takes ages to get her to go back down. I hate to admit it but I have been relying very heavily on benedryl these past few days. I feel more tired than I did when Livia was a small baby, as opposed to the crawling, pulling up baby that she is now. And when I think of the fact that in a few days we will be cooped up a in plane for 9 hours, it makes me feel even more tired. On Tuesday we are all flying to the States to see my parents and take in the beauty of Target and TJMaxx. There is something rather ironic in the fact that after choosing to live so far from home, I now spend large amounts of time and money trying to get back. I view the day of travel kind of like that initial plunge you have to take when you get in the pool. It's really hot and you want to get into the pool, where incidentally, George Clooney is paddling around as well, but the water is just really cold, and you know it won't be pleasant. So you hold you breath and jump in, going deep under the water because when you come up to the surface you will be so glad that you decided to jump in and go swimming with George.
I no longer have pity for people travelling alone, or even for people travelling in couples. In my opinion if you aren't travelling with two small children for more than five hours you really have nothing to complain about. Yes, the seats are small, but have you tried to sit in the small seats with a wiggling 10 months old on your lap so you won't have to pay for a full price ticket? Ever tried to cut up your half frozen Little Debbie cherry cake as the baby grabs for the miniscule cup of water on your tray and manages to pour it in your lap? By now I should be a pro at travelling with small children. Giulio took his first flight to America when he was almost nine months old, and there was some mix-up in the seating and the bulkhead seats were given to someone else. The Italian flight crew felt terrible, Giulio wouldn't be able to take a proper nap (!) and so they gave him a seat all for himself next to me. This was right before he could crawl, and I remember him sitting up in his seat, looking around and seeming so pleased with himself. On the return flight we had an American flight crew, whose attitude towards people who had opted to fly with children was something in the lines of, "You're flying with a baby? That's your f@%##ing problem." Giulio, who in the interveening month had learned to crawl, spent the flight from New York to Milan crawling over our ankles and being pulled back from going into the aisle. He conked out, exhausted, about two hours before we landed. It was the first time that I was so preoccupied with what was going on that I didn't even think about the flight. It was also the first time that I was able to fall asleep on a plane without any sort of a sleep aid.
Fastforward to a year later, with Giulio who stood the entire flight between our knees, wide awake the whole flight to New York. My friend Theresa had sworn by this all natural sleep aide that her own son Luca, (who woke up every night for the first two years of his life,) and had told me that it would knock Giulio right out. I was so convinced that I didn't even bother trying it out, only to find that mid-flight it had no effect on him. Thinking we were underestimating the dose we kept trying to give him more drops, which only had the effect of making him more hyper. That particular trip I flew back alone to Italy alone with Giulio, Lorenzo had gone back a few weeks earlier for work. It had been a long, tiring day and in New York my connecting flight had been late so I had had to run pushing the stroller, while wearing cowboy boots (don't ask) to make the flight. I came aboard, panting and sweating, clutching Giulio and immediately came face to face with some immaculate member of the Alitalia flight crew, the tall, dark, handsome kind of man that makes women decide to move to Italy for La Dolce Vita, and who you never find working in coach. He greeted me with a courteous "Buona Sera" and I just managed to not drip sweat on him. I sqeezed past two newly-weds on the end of the aisle on their way back from their honeymoon in America, holding Giulio and still sweating, and took my seat next to them. Giulio almost immediately started crying. Not weeping, sad, needing comfort crying, but full throated screaming that nothing could stop. Trying to give reassuring smiles to the couple looking warily at Giulio, (it will only be a minute folks! I have no idea why he is doing this!) I did my best to try and comfort him, but nothing worked until I was practically in tears myself. The (luckily) Italian flight crew were sympathetic ("O, che caro! Poverino! Perche piangi?") but nothing could stop the onslaught. I managed to get half of a Melatonina tablet (we had discovered in the States that these made him sleep) down Giulio's throat, making his screams of outrage even louder. At this point one of the flight attendants came over and offered the couple next to me the possibility of two seats in another part of the plane, which they gratefully accepted. Giulio stopped crying, and 15 minutes later he was asleep, passed out on the floor of the plane. The rest of the flight, with two empty seats next to me passed without incident.
Then last November, I did perhaps the bravest-dumbest thing ever. I decided to fly alone with TWO children, with Livia just three months old, and Giulio having just turned three. "It's going to be awful," I told my mother. "Yes, it is," she said, "but you will survive." She was right, it was awful. Not that there was one peak moment of awful, at least not on the plane, but sort of a long sustained note of awfulness that lasted the entire time. That time I decided that I wasn't going to be forcing sleep pills down Giulio's throat. Two days before flying I cut the Melatonina in half, and slipped the halves into two of Giulio's favorite chewy candies, which I then re-wrapped and put in my purse. Moments after the plane had pulled back from the gate I got them out and casually offered them to Giulio who immediately accepted and ate them. I watched him chewing, feigning calm, thinking, He's eating them! He's eating them! Now he will sleep for five-six hours! The men who tried to poison Rasputin, the advisor to the Russian Tzar, must have felt much the same way-- their plan had worked! And yet, as with Rasputin, who in the end had to be shot twelve times, put in a sack and thrown into the river before he died, the melatonina wasn't enough. Giulio slept precisely one hour before being wide awake and difficult in a way that only a three year old can be for the whole rest of the flight. Livia who was still too little to be very difficult, was luckily wonderful, flashing 100 watt smiles at the people in the row behind us, and falling asleep on and off. We had started the flight with a women in the seat next to me, saying she needed to sit in the bulkhead for the circulation in her legs, but who after an hour must have decided that her circulation could risk it, because she moved, leaving us with the three seats to ourselves, so at least I had somewhere to put Livia for some of the time. What saved the day was how truly kind people were, or maybe how pathetic I looked. In New York, after getting off the plane and heading towards customs, I was carrying Livia (jfk keeps all the strollers and only gives them back along with the rest of the luggage), three bags, three coats, and Giulio's carseat which hadn't worked with the airplane seats and had become an albatross around my neck. Giulio, tired, confused, and basically fed-up, demanded to be carried, and when I said I couldn't, collapsed to the floor and refused to move. I was about to collapse too when suddenly I heard a kind voice saying "Can I help you?" It was a women from our Milan flight. She took LIvia, her husband took the car seat, and I took Giulio and so we went on to fight another day, or at least another flight. My mom said that when I came up the ramp where they were waiting for me in Cincinnati I looked like a refugee.
On the flight back home after Christmas, this time thankfully with Lorenzo, Giulio wouldn't keep his tray table up, Livia didn't want to be held and kept wiggling, Lorenzo turned to me and asked, "How did you ever do this on your own?" All I can say is that I must really like Target.
As a p.s. think of me on Tuesday 6/26 and offer up a little prayer to the airline gods that all goes smoothly. This time I am taking Benedryl with me for the kids!
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Housewife
Giulio's surgery went very well, and yesterday, four days after the fact, he went back to school. Lorenzo was also granted time off because his son was having surgery, so we were able to actually have a normal weekend with Daddy home the whole time. Home of course is a relative term. Lorenzo never just hangs out at home. If he is here he is doing some sort of home improvement, putting up a book shelf, fixing a tap, painting a chipped corner of the wall, or calling around about getting new blinds for our tiny study. Otherwise he is making sandwiches and hustling us out the door to go somewhere and have a picnic or a big meal, or a hike. In two days we went up to Lake Garda for a picnic and up to the Valle Brembana which is on the edge of the Alps for lunch and a walk. He only flops on the couch, tv remote in his hand when it is too late in the evening to do anything else, and of course within minutes he is asleep. It is hard to be lazy with some one like that around, but then my life grants me few possibilities to sit around and do nothing, as does most people's, as there is always something to be done. Only a few weeks ago, both children were sick, the laundry was piling up, the house was messy, and I was sick too. As Livia whined and squirmed in my lap I turned to Lorenzo and told him that I was tired of being the Mommy, I wanted someone to come and take care of me. I was fed up with finding piles of clean laundry on the bed and knowing that if I didn't fold them, no one else would. He laughed and gave me a kiss, but what I wanted was someone to come in and whisk the children away, clean the house and let me sleep right through it. In other words I wanted my mommy. Lorenzo could keep his kisses, they weren't going to let me stay in bed for another two hours.
I am grateful that my job gives me free hours at odd times of the day, so that way I can get things done while the kids are at school. Things stay put away when Giulio is not a home, crumbs do not accumulate in and around the kitchen with Livia at daycare. Because one thing I've learned living in Italy is that housekeeping is not something done on the weekend when you have a free half hour. No, it is an on-going full time job keeping a household up to Italian standards. I always thought Americans were clean people, we pride ourselves on our cleanliness, and admit it, the first thing that we like to imply about Europeans is that they are perhaps not as clean as us. Now I can't speak for the rest of Europe, but Italians are CLEAN. Yes, it is true, they smell different from Americans, but I'm speaking to you as a shower taking-deodorant/anti-perspirant wearing-US citizen, and I've notice that I smell differently here as compared to when I am in the US, so obviously it's diet and not lack of hygene that causes this.
At any rate, when it comes to housecleaning, I have never met women so driven about cleaning as Italians. In the US, we vacuum our wall-to-wall carpet, we do laundry, we dust, and we clean the bathrooms. For most of us, if the house looks orderly, doesn't smell, and the floors aren't sticky, well, we've done a good job. House cleaning in Italy means lifting up couches each week to clean underneath them, wiping down the hood over the stove for any grease that may have gotten there, and cleaning all windows at least twice a month. Wall-to-wall carpeting is viewed as unsanitary, and so in its place there is parquet, tile, or marble, which is vacuumed and dusted once a day and washed at least once a week. Every morning the bedroom windows are flung open and the bedding is hung out the window to allow it to air out. Carpets are taken off the floors, vaccumed, and the hung outside. Sticky fingerprints are wiped off of doors and lightswitches, and children's toys are carefully cleaned and dusted off. When the show "Wife Swap" came to Italy, ( a show where for 7 days two women switch houses and families to see what happens) it shows women in their daily routine as wives and mothers, the one thing I couldn't get over was how many women get up at 6 am so they can clean the house before going to work. I'm lucky if I get all the dishes out of the sink and into the dishwasher first thing in the morning. The ultimate insult on that show is for a woman to say that she had found dust in the other woman's home, implying the ultimate shame: you keep a dirty house. Cleanliness does not stop at the inside, there are women who weekly wipe down the shutters on the exterior of the house or apartment, and mop all outside patios and balconies. Gardens, no matter how small, are tended to with military precision and are often tider than most American's living rooms. When I think of an American housewife, I think of her pushing a huge grocery cart through the supermarket, folding laundry from the drier, or driving little Cadyn to soccer practise. When I think of an Italian housewife I think of a woman dressed in old clothes down on her hands and knees cleaning the dirt that has accumulated behind her oven. And then we compare notes about it. Never in my life I thought I would have conversations with other people about housework, other than the basic, "today I cleaned the house." Now I find myself down at Terry's, having long connversations that contain phrases like," Well, I just vaccumed the floors, now I have to go mop the kitchen and outside balcony." Or I listen to Terry run down the list of things she accomplished that morning, "I mopped the whole house, organized the kids' bedroom. Now I just have to clean all the kitchen counters with bleach." Just to clarify, I clean my house once a week, with the occasional touch-up on the floor when I see too many crumbs overflowing from the kitchen,
And then of course there is the laundry. Yes, laundry is a cross that women all over the world have to bear. Men think, including my husband, that because they have put dirty clothes into the machine and pressed a few buttons they have "done" the laundry, but that is like saying because they were present at conception a man has given birth to a baby. In Italy the button pushing part is the easiest part, it's what comes after that is so time consuming and tiring. I do have a drier, but because it causes spikes in my electric bills I try to use it sparingly, only in the months when clothes take a long time to dry on their own. Therefore for the rest of the year, and especially right now, all clothes are hung up to dry, either on a drying rack on my balcony or on the clotheslines we have down in the yard. There is something suprisingly satisifying about hanging up clothes on the line, you can see all your hard work and effort right before your eyes, and there is something so wholesome about white sheets flapping in the breeze. If it's hot the clothes I hang up in the late morning are bone dry by early evening, but if the weather is sort of iffy and damp it can take several days, and while you are waiting for that load to dry more clothes pile up until you have mountains of laundry to deal with. Lorenzo is a good guy, works hard, helps in the house, but he has no problem walking right past laundry piled on the bed waiting to folded, ironed, and put away. For some reason this is "my" job, though in a pinch he will help me fold if I ask. But ironing is my responsibility. What's the big deal? you may ask. So you iron a few shirts, big whoop. In my house growing up ironing was all do it yourself, clothes came out of the dryer relatively wrinkle free, were folded and put away. Occasionally, the morning before some big meeting I would find my father ironing his dress shirt on top of a towel on one end of the kitchen counter, or my mother would drag out the board to freshen up something of ours that we wanted to wear to church minutes before tearing out the door saying we were going to be late. Ironing was optional, something done only in extremely needy cases. Imagine my surprise when coming to Italy to find that ironing wasn't just mandatory, it was a competitive sport. My neighbor irons EVERYTHING. Shirts, pants, underwear, socks, sheets, towels, baby bibs, and believe me she is not the only one. I, unable to break free from my non-ironing roots, take a more moderate approach. If it can't be seen outside the house, I don't iron it. Therefore, I iron basically "only" shirts and pants, I leave my sheets and towels with wrinkles and hope that no one will ever discover the shameful fact that I don't iron everyone's underwear. I do however have a secret weapon: I have a five star iron. Before I had your basic iron, with the little platic vial that holds about half a cup of water. Using that I felt at times like I had decided to climb Mount Everest wearing only a pair of Keds. The wrinkles, perhaps made more resistant by our calcium-heavy water, simply deepened, one shirt could take 30 minutes. My loathing of ironing made me simply avoid doing it, while Lorenzo's work shirts piled up in the closet. Then I found what I suppose would be a called a "professional" iron, basically its a small metal iron with a long tube attached that feeds into a small 1-liter tank. The iron sits on top of the tank when not in use. The tank heats the water and keeps it under pressure so the steam shoots out of the iron in hot powerful gusts. It's like watering your garden with a fire hose. Nothing stands a chance against this work of superior craftsmanship, and in under an hour I can do my week's quota. Just to prove how great this iron is, my mother when she came to visit last spring enjoyed using it so much I had to hold her back from ironing our underwear. My father said she had ironed more in those three months than she had in her entire life. It was truly a miracle.
And now I have a pile of Giulio's shirts I must attack. Sigh. An Italian woman's work is never done........
I am grateful that my job gives me free hours at odd times of the day, so that way I can get things done while the kids are at school. Things stay put away when Giulio is not a home, crumbs do not accumulate in and around the kitchen with Livia at daycare. Because one thing I've learned living in Italy is that housekeeping is not something done on the weekend when you have a free half hour. No, it is an on-going full time job keeping a household up to Italian standards. I always thought Americans were clean people, we pride ourselves on our cleanliness, and admit it, the first thing that we like to imply about Europeans is that they are perhaps not as clean as us. Now I can't speak for the rest of Europe, but Italians are CLEAN. Yes, it is true, they smell different from Americans, but I'm speaking to you as a shower taking-deodorant/anti-perspirant wearing-US citizen, and I've notice that I smell differently here as compared to when I am in the US, so obviously it's diet and not lack of hygene that causes this.
At any rate, when it comes to housecleaning, I have never met women so driven about cleaning as Italians. In the US, we vacuum our wall-to-wall carpet, we do laundry, we dust, and we clean the bathrooms. For most of us, if the house looks orderly, doesn't smell, and the floors aren't sticky, well, we've done a good job. House cleaning in Italy means lifting up couches each week to clean underneath them, wiping down the hood over the stove for any grease that may have gotten there, and cleaning all windows at least twice a month. Wall-to-wall carpeting is viewed as unsanitary, and so in its place there is parquet, tile, or marble, which is vacuumed and dusted once a day and washed at least once a week. Every morning the bedroom windows are flung open and the bedding is hung out the window to allow it to air out. Carpets are taken off the floors, vaccumed, and the hung outside. Sticky fingerprints are wiped off of doors and lightswitches, and children's toys are carefully cleaned and dusted off. When the show "Wife Swap" came to Italy, ( a show where for 7 days two women switch houses and families to see what happens) it shows women in their daily routine as wives and mothers, the one thing I couldn't get over was how many women get up at 6 am so they can clean the house before going to work. I'm lucky if I get all the dishes out of the sink and into the dishwasher first thing in the morning. The ultimate insult on that show is for a woman to say that she had found dust in the other woman's home, implying the ultimate shame: you keep a dirty house. Cleanliness does not stop at the inside, there are women who weekly wipe down the shutters on the exterior of the house or apartment, and mop all outside patios and balconies. Gardens, no matter how small, are tended to with military precision and are often tider than most American's living rooms. When I think of an American housewife, I think of her pushing a huge grocery cart through the supermarket, folding laundry from the drier, or driving little Cadyn to soccer practise. When I think of an Italian housewife I think of a woman dressed in old clothes down on her hands and knees cleaning the dirt that has accumulated behind her oven. And then we compare notes about it. Never in my life I thought I would have conversations with other people about housework, other than the basic, "today I cleaned the house." Now I find myself down at Terry's, having long connversations that contain phrases like," Well, I just vaccumed the floors, now I have to go mop the kitchen and outside balcony." Or I listen to Terry run down the list of things she accomplished that morning, "I mopped the whole house, organized the kids' bedroom. Now I just have to clean all the kitchen counters with bleach." Just to clarify, I clean my house once a week, with the occasional touch-up on the floor when I see too many crumbs overflowing from the kitchen,
And then of course there is the laundry. Yes, laundry is a cross that women all over the world have to bear. Men think, including my husband, that because they have put dirty clothes into the machine and pressed a few buttons they have "done" the laundry, but that is like saying because they were present at conception a man has given birth to a baby. In Italy the button pushing part is the easiest part, it's what comes after that is so time consuming and tiring. I do have a drier, but because it causes spikes in my electric bills I try to use it sparingly, only in the months when clothes take a long time to dry on their own. Therefore for the rest of the year, and especially right now, all clothes are hung up to dry, either on a drying rack on my balcony or on the clotheslines we have down in the yard. There is something suprisingly satisifying about hanging up clothes on the line, you can see all your hard work and effort right before your eyes, and there is something so wholesome about white sheets flapping in the breeze. If it's hot the clothes I hang up in the late morning are bone dry by early evening, but if the weather is sort of iffy and damp it can take several days, and while you are waiting for that load to dry more clothes pile up until you have mountains of laundry to deal with. Lorenzo is a good guy, works hard, helps in the house, but he has no problem walking right past laundry piled on the bed waiting to folded, ironed, and put away. For some reason this is "my" job, though in a pinch he will help me fold if I ask. But ironing is my responsibility. What's the big deal? you may ask. So you iron a few shirts, big whoop. In my house growing up ironing was all do it yourself, clothes came out of the dryer relatively wrinkle free, were folded and put away. Occasionally, the morning before some big meeting I would find my father ironing his dress shirt on top of a towel on one end of the kitchen counter, or my mother would drag out the board to freshen up something of ours that we wanted to wear to church minutes before tearing out the door saying we were going to be late. Ironing was optional, something done only in extremely needy cases. Imagine my surprise when coming to Italy to find that ironing wasn't just mandatory, it was a competitive sport. My neighbor irons EVERYTHING. Shirts, pants, underwear, socks, sheets, towels, baby bibs, and believe me she is not the only one. I, unable to break free from my non-ironing roots, take a more moderate approach. If it can't be seen outside the house, I don't iron it. Therefore, I iron basically "only" shirts and pants, I leave my sheets and towels with wrinkles and hope that no one will ever discover the shameful fact that I don't iron everyone's underwear. I do however have a secret weapon: I have a five star iron. Before I had your basic iron, with the little platic vial that holds about half a cup of water. Using that I felt at times like I had decided to climb Mount Everest wearing only a pair of Keds. The wrinkles, perhaps made more resistant by our calcium-heavy water, simply deepened, one shirt could take 30 minutes. My loathing of ironing made me simply avoid doing it, while Lorenzo's work shirts piled up in the closet. Then I found what I suppose would be a called a "professional" iron, basically its a small metal iron with a long tube attached that feeds into a small 1-liter tank. The iron sits on top of the tank when not in use. The tank heats the water and keeps it under pressure so the steam shoots out of the iron in hot powerful gusts. It's like watering your garden with a fire hose. Nothing stands a chance against this work of superior craftsmanship, and in under an hour I can do my week's quota. Just to prove how great this iron is, my mother when she came to visit last spring enjoyed using it so much I had to hold her back from ironing our underwear. My father said she had ironed more in those three months than she had in her entire life. It was truly a miracle.
And now I have a pile of Giulio's shirts I must attack. Sigh. An Italian woman's work is never done........
Monday, June 4, 2007
Dress Rehearsal
Giulio is set to get his adenoids out on Thursday. He has suffered from ear infections since he was four months old and by now has had more rounds of anti-biotics than I'd like to count. Along the way he has also suffered from two extreme allergic reactions to penicillian, one in which he wound up in the hospital, and another four day hospital stay over what was on its way to becoming mastoiditis. Everyone has told me that this surgery will change all that, that the rounds of antibiotics, the doctors' visits, the stress everytime he so much as coughs will vanish. Here's hoping. He was set to have the operation last week. We booked the operation 40 days earlier, and then 10 days before the set date he had to go the hospital for various tests and it was then that they gave us the definitive date for the operation. Which was just as well because organizing an overnight stay in a hospital required military precision and planning.
Our plan was that Lorenzo and I would be at the hospital all day with Giulio, and then in the evening I would go home to Livia and Lorenzo would stay overnight with Giulio. In Italian hospitals a parent or grandparent must be with the child at all times, which includes sleeping on a cot next to the child's hospital bed during the night. I remember my one overnight stay in a hospital when I was 9, they kicked the parents out at 8pm and practically barred them from re-entering before morning. (My dad still managed to sneak back in and sat by my bed until I fell asleep.) Even in Italy it wasn't always like this. Lorenzo has the horrific childhood memory when due to some illness he was isolated in hospital from his parents for something like 10 days! He remembers calling for his mother and not understanding why she wouldn't or couldn't come.
Luckily such draconian methods have gone by the wayside, perhaps to the point where we have gone a little too far in the other direction. There is nothing like trying to keep an energetic toddler entertained for four days on in a hospital ward to make you question if your parental presence is always absolutely necessary. Perhaps the hospitals smartened up to the fact that with mom or dad always present, the nurses would have more time to take care of patients, rather than running down the hallway after them. The only time we weren't allowed to stay overnight was when Livia was a few days old and being treated for jaundice. Ironically those first few days after birth is the one time when a woman is hormonally wired to not want her baby away from her for a moment, where as when they are older there are many times when you would pay to have them far away from you.....
Anyway, at least this time we had advanced notice, in the past Giulio's hospital stays have always come without any warning. Lorenzo asked for days off from work, and I moved my students and classes around in order to have the whole day free. I begged the lady as Livia's daycare for permission to leave her from 6:30am until 4pm, when Terry would go and get her and keep her until I came home, hopefully around 6:30 or 7. I felt terrible about leaving Livia all day, but as Lorenzo pointed out, Giulio was going to want his mommy. I lovingly packed his suitcase, and nervously presided over his cough that seemed to be only a cough, but was worrisome all the same. And we worried about the operation itself, how long it would take, how Giulio would feel afterwards, if he would be ok with the anesthetic. He needed the operation, WE needed him to have this operation, and would this cough keep him from having the operation because they had told us that if Giulio was sick they wouldn't do it? Then there was organizing for when Giulio was home again, how much school would he need to miss, I moved around more classes, promising to make them up the next week.
On Thursday morning we got up 5:45 and Lorenzo and Giulio were out the door by 6:15, the operation was set to take place around 7:30. I left around 6:40, left Livia at daycare and headed off to the hospital. Oh, yes, this was the other thing, the operation was not at our local hospital, the one five minutes from our house where both Giulio and Livia were born, and home to Giulio's previous hospital stays, but instead at a hospital 30 kilometers from home where they are well known for their ENTs. That was the other factor in this long day, the traffic. At any rate, I made good time and I was almost there when my phone rang. It was Lorenzo. I looked at the clock, only 7:15, still too early for any action.
"Yes?"
"CeeCee--we forgot the impegnativo from Giulio's pediatrician, I don't know if they will admit him without it."
"WHAT???!!"
The impegnativo is the pink slip of paper where your GP or Ped has to state what treatment needs to be done and why. This way the public health system pays for the treatment, it is certifying that this is a necessary operation, and it is being performed by doctors who are part of the NHS. If we didn't have it, it was very unlikely that they would admit Giulio for the operation, because it meant that the hospital would risk not being payed. Without the impegnativo the NHS wouldn't reimburse them for the cost of the operation, meaning it would be up to us to pay. But we could also just as easily promise to pay and then slip away without doing so.
I wasn't just irate about the forgotten impegnativo, I was irate about the WE. What WE?!! I hadn't known that we needed any sort of impegnativo, I had just spoken to Giulio's doctor a few days ago about a prescription and if I had known I would had asked her then for this super important piece of paper. Lorenzo had said nothing to me about needing an impegnativo, I had watched him check the list of papers we needed to bring with us just the night before. And now it seemed for a one small piece of paper, they wouldn't do the operation at all. I didn't know whether to laugh of cry. It's easy to sigh and say, oh Italy and its' bureucracy, but try getting admitted for an operation in the States saying you left your insurance information at home, but you would be sure and bring it tomorrow. They wouldn't let you into the parking lot.
At any rate, since I was practically there, I parked the car and went in the hospital to track down Lorenzo. I found him with a surprisingly cheerful (he hadn't eaten or drunk anything that morning) Giulio in tow. "Hi Mommy!" he cried, running over to me. "Hey, baby." I said, shooting snake eyes at Lorenzo over Giulio's head as I bent down to hug him.
"Ok," I said, straightening up. "What do we have to do?"
The first thing was to head up to the ward where Giulio's operation would be. There we found other parents with children and suitcases, and all surely, I thought grimly, with their impegnativi in hand. We explained our situation to Giulio's doctor, who referred us to the head nurse who did pre-surgery admittance for the ward. Her response when we told her that we didn't have the impegnativo was to beat her head on the door frame for a moment.
"I can't do anything," she said when she lifted her head. "Downstairs they won't admit him without it, meaning he won't be in the computer. For me, as long as you hear from his pediatrician and they promise to send the impegnativo over today, I don't have a problem. See what they say downstairs at Patient Admittance."
I looked at the clock, it was five minutes to 8, Giulio's pediatrician doesn't start taking calls until 8:30. You can call between 8:30 to 9:30 to get an appointment either for that day, or if you are calling about a check-up, later in the week. You call, describe your kid's symptons and she will tell you if they need to be seen that day or if you can wait and see for a day or so. Usually she will ask to see you that day. You also call about doctor's notes, prescriptions, and impegnativi, which she writes out and leaves in a basket in her office waiting room, with the child's name written on the outside for you to pick up. I decided to take a chance and go ahead and call, maybe she was answering early this morning. I immediately got her voice mail. Damn. I shook my head at Lorenzo, and then we went downstairs and outside where the phone reception was better, huddling in a tense group around Giulio's suitcase. I kept picking up the phone, calling, getting the dr's voice mail, cursing, and hanging up again. My stomach churned. Giulio needed this operation today, we had planned for today, I wasn't going to let some minor detail like an impegnativo stop me. At 8:32, the doctor picked up, I threw the phone at Lorenzo and let him ask her to help us. She was sympathetic, but she wasn't going to be in the office before the afternoon, one of us could come by and get the slip at 2, but not unfortunately not before then. It would have to do. We went back to the Patient Admittance desk downstairs, where Lorenzo had been rejected earlier to see what they would say about the impegnativo now that we had talked to the pediatrician. The lady wasn't moved. It wasn't us, she said, it was those doctors, always promising these forms, then forgetting to send them, and then the hospital gets stuck with the bill. She shook her head. I sat there on a bench next to the desk with Giulio in my lap and fixed her with my saddest,-come-on- we're-mothers,- I- know-you-have-been-here -too-look. I could see her weaken. "I will go there personally to pick up the form, this way you won't have to wait." I said. The woman was silent a moment. "Fine," she said. "It's not the parents,"she said again, typing away into the computer. "It's those doctors. Bring the form here as soon as you can!" We offered her thanks and our most dazzling smiles, and clutching the necessary admittance forms, ran upstairs once again to the third floor.
The head nurse was glad to see us, even though it was now 9:15. Smiling she ushured us into her office to start filling out forms. "Ok," she said, as I sat down across the table from her. "So, he hasn't eaten anything today, right? Any allergies? Ok......Now, how is he doing? Any health problems?" "Um," I said. "He has a bit of a cough, but other than that he is fine." She looked up from her paperwork. "Let me hear him cough." Giulio coughed. The nurse narrowed her eyes a moment. "Better check his temperature," she said, tucking a thermometer under his right arm. She continued with her questions. "Now Giulio there is a big girl in the same room as you, and you have to listen and do what she says." Giulio solemnly nodded. He knew all about listenting to older kids and doing what they said from preschool. I placed a well trained Mother's hand on Giulio's forehead and back. He didn't feel feverish. If we were at home right now, I would send him to school based on this forehead temperture reading. God Giulio, don't be sick, please don't be sick. We have made it this far, don't be sick. Giulio coughed again, this time it sounded more chesty, sick-y than the one he produced only moments before. The nurse got up and took the thermometer from his mouth. "Uh-uh." She shook her head. "He's got 98.9. Let me get the doctor." She left the room and came back almost immediately with someone in a long white coat. He looked in Giulio's mouth, ("well, he doesn't have tonsellitis.") and informed us that in doing surgery with even a low fever considerably raised the risks. Giulio would not be getting his andenoids out today. "Come back next week and we will do it then." The nurse smiled sympathetically, told us that the impegnativo that the pediatrician gave me today would still be good for next week, that she would see us soon, and escorted us out the door. It's didn't seem possible. We had overcome a lack of blood relatives, crazy work schedules, adversity, the Italian NHS, and low cell phone reception, only to be thwarted by a 98.9 fever. Defeated we slumped back to the car, Lorenzo headed off to the office, Giulio and I went home and watched "Babe".
The surgery was rescheduled, but this time Lorenzo is going by himself with Giulio, I have to work and I can't miss anymore lessons as this is the last week of school, and I don't feel like asking for any more favours from people, even if they would be more than willing to oblige. No, this time Lorenzo will be on his own. At least this time he has the impegnativo.
Our plan was that Lorenzo and I would be at the hospital all day with Giulio, and then in the evening I would go home to Livia and Lorenzo would stay overnight with Giulio. In Italian hospitals a parent or grandparent must be with the child at all times, which includes sleeping on a cot next to the child's hospital bed during the night. I remember my one overnight stay in a hospital when I was 9, they kicked the parents out at 8pm and practically barred them from re-entering before morning. (My dad still managed to sneak back in and sat by my bed until I fell asleep.) Even in Italy it wasn't always like this. Lorenzo has the horrific childhood memory when due to some illness he was isolated in hospital from his parents for something like 10 days! He remembers calling for his mother and not understanding why she wouldn't or couldn't come.
Luckily such draconian methods have gone by the wayside, perhaps to the point where we have gone a little too far in the other direction. There is nothing like trying to keep an energetic toddler entertained for four days on in a hospital ward to make you question if your parental presence is always absolutely necessary. Perhaps the hospitals smartened up to the fact that with mom or dad always present, the nurses would have more time to take care of patients, rather than running down the hallway after them. The only time we weren't allowed to stay overnight was when Livia was a few days old and being treated for jaundice. Ironically those first few days after birth is the one time when a woman is hormonally wired to not want her baby away from her for a moment, where as when they are older there are many times when you would pay to have them far away from you.....
Anyway, at least this time we had advanced notice, in the past Giulio's hospital stays have always come without any warning. Lorenzo asked for days off from work, and I moved my students and classes around in order to have the whole day free. I begged the lady as Livia's daycare for permission to leave her from 6:30am until 4pm, when Terry would go and get her and keep her until I came home, hopefully around 6:30 or 7. I felt terrible about leaving Livia all day, but as Lorenzo pointed out, Giulio was going to want his mommy. I lovingly packed his suitcase, and nervously presided over his cough that seemed to be only a cough, but was worrisome all the same. And we worried about the operation itself, how long it would take, how Giulio would feel afterwards, if he would be ok with the anesthetic. He needed the operation, WE needed him to have this operation, and would this cough keep him from having the operation because they had told us that if Giulio was sick they wouldn't do it? Then there was organizing for when Giulio was home again, how much school would he need to miss, I moved around more classes, promising to make them up the next week.
On Thursday morning we got up 5:45 and Lorenzo and Giulio were out the door by 6:15, the operation was set to take place around 7:30. I left around 6:40, left Livia at daycare and headed off to the hospital. Oh, yes, this was the other thing, the operation was not at our local hospital, the one five minutes from our house where both Giulio and Livia were born, and home to Giulio's previous hospital stays, but instead at a hospital 30 kilometers from home where they are well known for their ENTs. That was the other factor in this long day, the traffic. At any rate, I made good time and I was almost there when my phone rang. It was Lorenzo. I looked at the clock, only 7:15, still too early for any action.
"Yes?"
"CeeCee--we forgot the impegnativo from Giulio's pediatrician, I don't know if they will admit him without it."
"WHAT???!!"
The impegnativo is the pink slip of paper where your GP or Ped has to state what treatment needs to be done and why. This way the public health system pays for the treatment, it is certifying that this is a necessary operation, and it is being performed by doctors who are part of the NHS. If we didn't have it, it was very unlikely that they would admit Giulio for the operation, because it meant that the hospital would risk not being payed. Without the impegnativo the NHS wouldn't reimburse them for the cost of the operation, meaning it would be up to us to pay. But we could also just as easily promise to pay and then slip away without doing so.
I wasn't just irate about the forgotten impegnativo, I was irate about the WE. What WE?!! I hadn't known that we needed any sort of impegnativo, I had just spoken to Giulio's doctor a few days ago about a prescription and if I had known I would had asked her then for this super important piece of paper. Lorenzo had said nothing to me about needing an impegnativo, I had watched him check the list of papers we needed to bring with us just the night before. And now it seemed for a one small piece of paper, they wouldn't do the operation at all. I didn't know whether to laugh of cry. It's easy to sigh and say, oh Italy and its' bureucracy, but try getting admitted for an operation in the States saying you left your insurance information at home, but you would be sure and bring it tomorrow. They wouldn't let you into the parking lot.
At any rate, since I was practically there, I parked the car and went in the hospital to track down Lorenzo. I found him with a surprisingly cheerful (he hadn't eaten or drunk anything that morning) Giulio in tow. "Hi Mommy!" he cried, running over to me. "Hey, baby." I said, shooting snake eyes at Lorenzo over Giulio's head as I bent down to hug him.
"Ok," I said, straightening up. "What do we have to do?"
The first thing was to head up to the ward where Giulio's operation would be. There we found other parents with children and suitcases, and all surely, I thought grimly, with their impegnativi in hand. We explained our situation to Giulio's doctor, who referred us to the head nurse who did pre-surgery admittance for the ward. Her response when we told her that we didn't have the impegnativo was to beat her head on the door frame for a moment.
"I can't do anything," she said when she lifted her head. "Downstairs they won't admit him without it, meaning he won't be in the computer. For me, as long as you hear from his pediatrician and they promise to send the impegnativo over today, I don't have a problem. See what they say downstairs at Patient Admittance."
I looked at the clock, it was five minutes to 8, Giulio's pediatrician doesn't start taking calls until 8:30. You can call between 8:30 to 9:30 to get an appointment either for that day, or if you are calling about a check-up, later in the week. You call, describe your kid's symptons and she will tell you if they need to be seen that day or if you can wait and see for a day or so. Usually she will ask to see you that day. You also call about doctor's notes, prescriptions, and impegnativi, which she writes out and leaves in a basket in her office waiting room, with the child's name written on the outside for you to pick up. I decided to take a chance and go ahead and call, maybe she was answering early this morning. I immediately got her voice mail. Damn. I shook my head at Lorenzo, and then we went downstairs and outside where the phone reception was better, huddling in a tense group around Giulio's suitcase. I kept picking up the phone, calling, getting the dr's voice mail, cursing, and hanging up again. My stomach churned. Giulio needed this operation today, we had planned for today, I wasn't going to let some minor detail like an impegnativo stop me. At 8:32, the doctor picked up, I threw the phone at Lorenzo and let him ask her to help us. She was sympathetic, but she wasn't going to be in the office before the afternoon, one of us could come by and get the slip at 2, but not unfortunately not before then. It would have to do. We went back to the Patient Admittance desk downstairs, where Lorenzo had been rejected earlier to see what they would say about the impegnativo now that we had talked to the pediatrician. The lady wasn't moved. It wasn't us, she said, it was those doctors, always promising these forms, then forgetting to send them, and then the hospital gets stuck with the bill. She shook her head. I sat there on a bench next to the desk with Giulio in my lap and fixed her with my saddest,-come-on- we're-mothers,- I- know-you-have-been-here -too-look. I could see her weaken. "I will go there personally to pick up the form, this way you won't have to wait." I said. The woman was silent a moment. "Fine," she said. "It's not the parents,"she said again, typing away into the computer. "It's those doctors. Bring the form here as soon as you can!" We offered her thanks and our most dazzling smiles, and clutching the necessary admittance forms, ran upstairs once again to the third floor.
The head nurse was glad to see us, even though it was now 9:15. Smiling she ushured us into her office to start filling out forms. "Ok," she said, as I sat down across the table from her. "So, he hasn't eaten anything today, right? Any allergies? Ok......Now, how is he doing? Any health problems?" "Um," I said. "He has a bit of a cough, but other than that he is fine." She looked up from her paperwork. "Let me hear him cough." Giulio coughed. The nurse narrowed her eyes a moment. "Better check his temperature," she said, tucking a thermometer under his right arm. She continued with her questions. "Now Giulio there is a big girl in the same room as you, and you have to listen and do what she says." Giulio solemnly nodded. He knew all about listenting to older kids and doing what they said from preschool. I placed a well trained Mother's hand on Giulio's forehead and back. He didn't feel feverish. If we were at home right now, I would send him to school based on this forehead temperture reading. God Giulio, don't be sick, please don't be sick. We have made it this far, don't be sick. Giulio coughed again, this time it sounded more chesty, sick-y than the one he produced only moments before. The nurse got up and took the thermometer from his mouth. "Uh-uh." She shook her head. "He's got 98.9. Let me get the doctor." She left the room and came back almost immediately with someone in a long white coat. He looked in Giulio's mouth, ("well, he doesn't have tonsellitis.") and informed us that in doing surgery with even a low fever considerably raised the risks. Giulio would not be getting his andenoids out today. "Come back next week and we will do it then." The nurse smiled sympathetically, told us that the impegnativo that the pediatrician gave me today would still be good for next week, that she would see us soon, and escorted us out the door. It's didn't seem possible. We had overcome a lack of blood relatives, crazy work schedules, adversity, the Italian NHS, and low cell phone reception, only to be thwarted by a 98.9 fever. Defeated we slumped back to the car, Lorenzo headed off to the office, Giulio and I went home and watched "Babe".
The surgery was rescheduled, but this time Lorenzo is going by himself with Giulio, I have to work and I can't miss anymore lessons as this is the last week of school, and I don't feel like asking for any more favours from people, even if they would be more than willing to oblige. No, this time Lorenzo will be on his own. At least this time he has the impegnativo.
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