If all cases could end as happily as this one did, we'd all would be a lot better off, but for a while, we weren't even sure whether the little boy in question would even have a future ...

It was a beautiful Sunday, nearly one year ago, when this incident took place.  We were enjoying a quiet early morning, trying to catch our breath after the chaotic Friday night in our Emergency Department, when the tones sounded.  A child down; the child, a male about four years old in age, was currently en route to our hospital via ambulance.

I and my fellow nurses quickly got things in order; we would then meet the ambulance at the back bay, ready to put the child on the gurney and take him to one of the treatment tables, where would then start the appropriate treatment once we tried to figure out what was going on with the little boy.

About ten minutes later, the ambulance screeched to a halt.  My stomach lurched when I saw the child.  He was covered in blood, and he was unconscious.  He looked more dead than alive.  "Goose", one of the chief paramedics, reported that the child had been thrown down the stairs by his father.

An abuse case.  My heart fell clear to my toes, and tears pricked my eyes.

I could feel the (Cajun) anger in me threatening to overflow, but I knew I had to keep it inside.  I swallowed my pride and struggled internally to try to keep my cool.  I had to act professionally, or else I could very easily lose my job and end up in the unemployment line.

The E.R. charge nurse barked orders as the rest of us scurried around to get the kid plugged up, so we could see what was going on with his body.  We soon had his vital signs on display; what we saw was not encouraging.  Possible numerous broken bones, maybe internal injuries, and God knows what else was the order of the day. 

Suddenly, Becky, the E.R. nurse, screamed: "Code blue!! Code blue!!"  The kid had suddenly stopped breathing.  We quickly descended upon our patient and worked like dogs to try to get him going again.  CPR/rescue breathing was initiated, and we plugged even more IVs into him, as the monitors screeched like banshees into our assaulted ears.  We put all of our extra energies into trying to save the child, as I whispered desperate prayers to Heaven, asking God to let the little boy live.

God must have listened because the boy was back in less than four minutes.  It was nothing short of miraculous; however, the child was not out of the woods yet.  It was discovered that he had injuries to his pancreas, spleen, and liver, and fractures of the extremities, as well as a possible closed head injury with bleeding inside his brain.  The child, named Levi*, would probably face a very long recovery.

The father who purposely did this to his son was now in prison, serving a sixteen-month sentence of child abuse/endangerment to a child younger than the age of five years.  This apparently wasn't the first time this happened: the boy, upon examination, sported old scars and marks all over his body.  He had been abused before.

Happily, the child eventually recovered, but he is now living with a foster family, where he will probably be put up for adoption.  The child is now a lively, ever-giggling, thriving kindergarten student, with no lasting marks of his near-death encounter.  The father has been stripped of all parental rights when it was discovered that he had not only abused his children physically, but also sexually and emotionally.

Whenever I deal with cases like the above, it makes me want to quit nursing altogether and raise my children at home.  It makes me appreciate my children more; I want nothing more than to hug and kiss every one of them and tell them just how much I love them, which I do, every day, when I come home from work.  I can't even begin to think about harming my children in such a way that it would endanger their lives; I love them all too much.  I am their mother; I am supposed to love my kids and provide for them in any way possible.

Unfortunately, most scenarios don't end up like Levi's.  More often than not, little ones (or even not-so-little ones) are left permanently scarred or damaged somehow, and then we must fight to restore broken bodies and spirits.  Abuse in any form is near epidemic levels in our nation, and as nurses, though we try hard to repair, we can't fix every child: the problem is bigger than any of us; we are powerless to stop it.

All we can do is try to repair each child to the best of our ability and pray to God that lives can be saved, as it was in Levi's case.  That is, if the child (or children) in question even survive.

*Not child's real name.