I’m making my way into day three of hospital living: I’ve been here since Monday evening (well, with the exception of ten hours). During the day our time has been spent as professional waiters. Wait for the nurse, wait for the therapist, wait for a test, wait for results, wait for the neurologist, etc. At night, my job is to make sure my dad remembers he’s go an IV when he gets up to pee. It sounds a lot simpler than it is, unfortunately.
At any rate, here are some of the things I’ve learned so far as a guest in Hospital Land.
- Images of a blue sky and puffy white clouds is the wrong thing to have on the ceiling of the elevator, especially one used to transport patients on gurneys. Lucid people find it rather “Charlie In The Chocolate Factory”-esque. Those who aren’t so lucid tend to think they’re taking an elevator to heaven.
- Even hospital cafeterias can be behind the curve when it comes to celiac awareness. My sister has decided to write the hospital requesting gluten free signage, or at least that ingredient lists be posted with the menu.
- When your finances take a turn for the worse, spend some time in the hospital. Well, if you’re not gluten intolerant… Seriously, the cafeteria food is rather tasty and you can eat three meals a day for under $10. Plus, the wifi is open and there’s free coffee on the upper floors.
- No matter how badly you’ve slept and how uncomfortable you were, these four things will make you feel human in the morning: wash your face, brush your hair, change into clean socks, and get a cup of coffee. To tell the truth, I’d already learned this lesson the really hard way: stranded overnight in the Buenos Aires airport. I’m just getting a refresher course right now.
- Apparently snoring men can sleep through the most heinous alarm beeps known to humanity, but will wake up and grumble the instant someone bumps the lighting up from one candlewatt to two. It’s an interesting phenomenon, surely someone has written a paper on this already.
- Hitting the recommended 10,000 steps a day is really easy: just make three trips to your car from the second floor of the hospital. Another option is to pace incessantly in front of the elevator bays as you curse the fact that only half the elevators are working.
- Dysphagia (problems swallowing) can be a contraindicator of speaking difficulties and can be managed and treated by eating different food textures. That is the good news. The bad news is that suffering from dysphagia means that at first everything you ingest has to have a consistency somewhere between tomato juice and pudding. And I do mean everything, including your coffee, peaches, and chicken. Trust me, if you’ve never seen chicken with the consistency of pudding, you are a lucky person. And if you do happen to see chicken pudding, whatever you do, don’t smell it.
- Nurses will actually ask you if you want your prescribed stool softener suppository rather than just giving it to you. Amazingly, they report that some people do in fact say yes. Obviously those patients are not subsisting on a diet of chicken pudding.
- The surefire way to get taken away for that test you’ve been waiting for? Have your meal delivered. My father has had one hot meal in the past two days. Rumor has it that cold chicken pudding is even more horrific than hot chicken pudding.
- There’s always someone worse of than you are. Period. Don’t believe me? Walk through the hospital during visitors hours. Heck, just walk through a parking deck and you’ll hear enough to convince you it’s true.
