Tough Week

We had alot going on this week.  Thankfully Patric was here to help with it all.  Unfortunately we spent half of the week not talking much because of an argument and I really hated this because I knew I would need him for the deposition--I would need him to be there for me when I was weak and stumbling.  And he was.  We talked through our "spat" and got "us" fixed again....just in time.

I don't want to get into the deposition very much other than to "vent" about the whole purpose of this lawsuit from our perspective versus anyone else's.  Like the attorneys, for example.  I had met a few attorneys in our pursuit to find one that would represent us and those experiences were not pleasant, mostly given the circumstances.  One of the attorneys was completely heartless when he spoke to me and finally told me he couldn't represent me because he didn't think we could prove negligence.....all the while his wife was having a baby any day.  Ouch.  The attorney that we did chose is very good and friendly, respectful of our sensitivity to the topic and his firm seems very nice whenever I speak with them.  However, when I went to the deposition, I quickly learned the business of this lawsuit.  And it started when our attorney was telling me the "important" points in our case.  And when I told her things that led up to that or details that surrounding these points, she said "but none of that matters, stay focused" and I just looked at Patric with tears welling up and said "but it all matters, every second of every bit of this matters".  I can't understand it, but I start to see it for what it is...

There was no human factor to anyone but me while I was in that room.  This is a job for them and when the day is done, they go home to their kids and my dead baby means nothing to them.  I don't know why I would expect that--this is a job after all.  To me and Patric, however, this is about our baby boy and we go home at the end of the day, we only get to see his picture....and hope and pray we said the right things to the attorneys that will allow us to live proudly and with the same dignity we had before we walked into that deposition.  And if the cards are played right, we will get the satisfaction of knowing that what this doctor did to us will not go unnoticed and will not be allowed to do the same thing to anyone else.  But this is a game.  And while our stakes are our dignity and grace and peace, the stakes of the attorney are the money of the insurance companies.  And we are merely pawns in that game.  They never knew my son.  I don't think they have even seen pictures of him.  They don't want to, though.  They don't want to make this job of theirs "human" when it involves a death or loss.  That would be too painful.  Too real.  To them it remains a job, a profession with an end in sight.  Something we will never be satisfied with....the end to this story.

Growing up, my dad was a volunteer fireman for our community and I remember him going through weeks and weeks (or it could have been months and months, I don't know) of schooling to be an EMT, too.  There was a siren in town that would sound off in code (one siren meant something, two sirens meant something different and so on) in our town and he would rush  to the town firestation and prepare to go out on the call, whatever it was--a fire, a car accident, a farming accident or whatever.  Being a small community, a lot of the time he knew the people who's call he was going to.  One day he went out on a call and it was a 5th grade classmate of mine's house.  Dad arrived at the scene with the ambulance to find blood everywhere in the house and a young boy on the floor, lying there lifeless, dead of a shotgun wound...by accident with his cousin, also in my class.    Since there were only 13 kids in my class, we knew him well.  I remember my dad coming home from that call and taking me in his bedroom and telling me what happened--that my classmate had died.  Dad was very upset, I could tell.  And that was the last call he went on in the ambulance.  He quit that job (it was a volunteer job) because it hit too close to home to him.  The human factor of his job when he saw the trauma of a kid the same age as his own was too much to handle and he couldn't remove this from his mind anymore.  Unlike the attorney's. I wonder if there are any attorney's that represent malpractice cases that have lost a baby due to the negligence of a doctor.  And I wonder if that experience makes them better attorney's when representing someone who has gone through what they have.  It's kind of like talking to a nurse during your labor and delivery of your rainbow baby and finding out she, too, lost a baby and she, too, had a rainbow.  You know she knows exactly how you feel.  As her patient, that comforts me.   WIthout her even having to say a word.  I know she knows.  But the legal system doesn't require such.  Apparently you don't have to be human, though it would be nice.  It might make this process more than just a transaction.