Aspiration

On the first Saturday in May last year, instead of attending a celebration hosted by one of the academic groups to which I belong, a gathering I have attended each year since being affiliated with this group, I was bringing Sekai home from the hospital. He had been hospitalized for pneumonia. After days of waiting for the cultures to grow, the infectious disease doctors determined that the type of bacteria meant that the pneumonia was caused by an aspiration. When they told us this, Sekai simply smiled. The infectious disease specialist asked him why he was smiling, and he responded that he was pleased to know that he had successfully given himself an aspiration pneumonia, and how this was part of his plan. She asked more about this, and we shared with her the information that we had shared with numerous specialists: my son was working on an exit strategy. She asked if he had been seen by the hospital's pediatric psychiatrist, and we both informed her that Sekai had been under that psychiatrist's service when he was in the hospital just weeks before for pulling out his feeding tube.

Her response was something like this: Ok. Well, it would be good if he could be seen by a psychiatrist before we discharge him, but Dr. SoAndSo is our only pediatric psychiatrist, and he is on vacation in Rome for the next few weeks. But I will let him know about this when he returns.

I wonder if she really did let him know. We never heard from him. I wonder if any of those doctors know that the word aspiration appeared on my son's autopsy report just a few weeks later.

aspiration 1.) strong desire, longing, or aim; ambition... 2.) a goal or objective desired... 5.b.) the act of inhaling fluid or a foreign body into the bronchi and lungs, often after vomiting