"you! you! you!"

My back was towards him, but you know how you can tell by the texture/quality of sound if someone's voice is directed towards you, even if your back is turned? I could tell he was yelling at me. I was standing at the computer in the hall, charting one of any number of details that are all digitally documented in this day and age. Location: 8East, my old floor at St. Louis Children's Hospital...now my "new" floor. A lot has changed in the 3 years I've been gone, and as with the rest of life, most of it is in the realm of technology. When?: Yesterday. It was my first shift back on the floor. I was trying to keep on top of the details, a battle I'll likely be struggling to win but not likely ever succeeding in the months to come.

The little dude yelling at me was probably 4 or so...his cute little self jumping up and down on his bed; trying to eat a snack and jump and point and yell at me all at the same time. Little dudes really are remarkable multi-taskers...and he was managing to do pretty well at all of those things, and be super cute at the same time. I couldn't help but be distracted from my charting to yell and point right back at him. "you! you! you!" He giggled and we went back and forth with the yelling and pointing until his mom returned from grabbing something to drink. She was very apologetic as she approached the room, "I'm so sorry" she said. "No, no, please, don't be. I love it" I answered. I went on to ask the little yelling dude what he was eating and whether he was feeling better and so forth. He just smiled and kept yelling "you! you! you!" and I leaned my head back and laughed, turning back to the computer to try to remember what it was I was doing before I was so cutely interrupted.

Of all the crazy computer documentation, the insane access to inordinate volumes of supplies, meds, food, information, resources (the list is un-ending), the wonderful nurse/patient ratios, the number of doctors of all kinds wandering around with packs of medical students and interns and residents in tow...it was the cute little yelling dude that stuck out in my mind as a light bulb moment in my first day back in the thick of western medicine. You know why? Because I could understand what he was yelling at me! AND he could understand me when I yelled back! Most of the kids I've interacted with in the last 3 years, I haven't been able to understand. And even when I have been able to understand, I rarely knew how to reply in a language they could understand. While it's true, if a kid in Bundibugyo was yelling "you! you! you!" ("weh! weh! weh!) I actually could understand that, and could reply in a similar fashion, it never amounted to much substance. I did manage to banter with the kids on the ward and at my door, even if we couldn't understand each other and laughed a lot doing it. But there was always a nagging desire for more; a desire to hear more, to say more.

So my cute little yelling dude made me so happy. He probably wasn't making his mom so happy...I guessed he must have been an asthmatic or something, hyped up on albuterol and almost literally bouncing off the walls and driving his mother batty...but that's the beauty of it all - I'm not his mom, (or his nurse actually), just the "lady at the compooter" (which he called out to me when I went back to my charting :). So, in that moment, he made my day.