The Price of Permanence

Hospitals are “free” — until a child needs a surgery that's years down a state waiting list to even qualify for the family he's already earned. Help us get him into theatre before December.

HIS STORY

Day one, they tell him: nothing to eat, nothing to drink, theatre first thing. He's done this before, so he knows the drill, and he knows better than to believe it.

He is right not to believe it. No oxygen today. Try again tomorrow.

Day two: theatre's too hot. Day three: no doctor. Day four: no nurses on the ward. Every morning, the same promise. Every evening, the same collapse. He lies there, nil per mouth, hungry and thirsty and increasingly furious, while a procedure that takes a single morning in a private hospital fails to happen for the fifty-third time.

Seven and a half weeks. That's how long it actually took.

Here's the thing people don't picture when they picture a child needing surgery: he is not fragile. He is a firecracker. He negotiates snack privileges like a shop steward. He has an opinion on ev...