Leadership and Crisis by Bobby Jindal

Author:Bobby Jindal
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
Published: 2010-10-19T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

REAL CHANGE FOR HEALTHCARE

I magine for a moment you are standing in a quiet hospital room holding your three-month-old son in your arms for what could be the last time.

He is looking up at you with his beautiful, innocent brown eyes. And you stare down into his tiny face and wonder how you, his parent, are so powerless to save him that you need to entrust his life to a complete stranger. Despite having done all you can do, you are scared. And the helplessness you feel doesn’t stop the crushing weight of responsibility that comes with being a parent deeply in love with your new child.

The time has come to hand him over. You are paralyzed; you love him too much to let him go, but your love for him has led you here, to this strange place full of technology and experts—and other scared families. All you want at that moment is for someone to tell you everything will be all right and that your boy is going to be healthy.

But reality sets in. He is in the hospital. He needs help. And there is no other way. You must swallow your fears for the moment—just long enough to gently pass your little boy into the hands of the anesthesiologist who will prepare him for surgery. No amount of reason can dull the feeling that a part of you is being torn away as she takes your son through the large operating room doors and out of sight.

For me, this was not a hypothetical situation. I was standing in that hospital room in 2004, holding my second child, Shaan, in my arms. And let me tell you—letting him go at that moment was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

We had no reason to suspect there was anything wrong with Shaan when he was born only a few months earlier. The birth had gone smoothly, and he looked like any other healthy baby. But a week later, during a regular checkup, Shaan’s pediatrician detected a heart murmur. Later that morning, we took Shaan to a pediatric cardiologist who diagnosed him with a serious heart defect, which would prevent him from breathing or eating normally without becoming exhausted.

My immediate reaction was that I’d give anything and everything to trade places with Shaan. I was devastated for him, devastated that this innocent little boy had this burden. When we see horrible tragedies happen to other people, we never think it will happen to us or to those we love. Of course, we feel compassion for children afflicted with disease or chronic health problems, and we pray for them and their families. But trust me, it is never truly real until it happens to your own child.

The cardiologist said the problem might fix itself, but if it didn’t—and in Shaan’s case it did not look like it would—he would need life-saving open-heart surgery. The doctor then gave us one of the toughest prescriptions imaginable: waiting. Three grueling months of it.

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