As a child I believe you can make anything fun, there is always an adventure you can imagine, an usual places that can become playground, and when I was thirteen that place was Royal Melbourne Hospital, and while my Mum was still in a coma, it was the most absorbing distraction I could of imagined.
To be honest I had to distract myself, one look at Mum with all those tubes coming out of her, I had fainted, so as only a child can do when overwhelmed by a situation, I let my mind wonder, I looked for escape, and I went to explore.
I started visiting other patients, it was great, often they were so medicated they thought they knew me, I'd sit down and chat away, keeping my eyes peeled for their relatives so that I could bolt from the room before I would need to explain what I was doing there.
I followed the nurses and did odd jobs for them, pretending I was one of the staff, I was a perpetual little lackey, running around the wards, but the most fun of all was taking my younger cousins with me on adventure rides in the lifts, we would wait for the doors to close, then jump up and down like little maniacs laughing hysterically.
Basically I did everything I could to avoid being in Intensive Care, I found that when I was in there too long I would have problems breathing, it was the most unusual feeling, my chest would constrict every time I inhaled, I would look at her, and I knew something had been broken, there was an element missing, it is hard to describe now, but even before I realized the extent of her injury, I could sense the damage.
Coping mechanisms and intuition in children are amazing, the ability to refocus is so strong, and comes so easily, I can honestly say that I dealt with everything that happened much better then than I would if you same events happened today, but then again that wishful thinking and imagination of a child to not really accept the reality may just be the juvenile version of adult denial.
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