Author:
GB34
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Date Posted: 19:58:08 09/20/13 Fri
>I had a bout in the hospital earlier this week. I
>dont think it's appropriate to get into the gory
>details, but suffice to say there's a good reason why
>I don't care to have much to do with hospitals.
>Fortunately, I've been able to avoid it happening very
>often but I fear that as I grow older I may not be
>able to avoid it as much as I have in the past.
>
>One of my favorite expressions is "it doesn't have to
>make sense." I find that especially true about
>hospitals. They are, and probably correctly, slaves to
>procedure and all the paperwork being in the proper
>place. Whether any common sense is involved can be
>hard to discern from the patient viewpoint.
>
>For example, I found it hard to turn over in a
>hospital bed. It's not easy at home, either, and
>sometimes it's easier to just get up and turn around
>than it is to thrash around and wake up my wife.
>Honestly, I do it without waking up very much. So, one
>morning, I was in the process of turning over when I
>was shaken awake by a passing nurse's aide. "Are you
>all right?" she asked.
>
>I told her I was fine. "Great," she said. "Now that
>you're awake, can I get your weight?"
>
>Two-thirty in the morning and she was wandering the
>halls looking for someone to weigh! It turns out that
>it's hospital protocol to weigh people between two and
>six in the morning. So much for sleeping in. For that
>matter, so much for sleeping, period. I never did get
>back to sleep that night.
>
>Ah, weight. Hospitals, weight and me have a long but
>convoluted history. During my previous hospital stay,
>four years ago, I lost twenty-five pounds in a week.
>That was the bad news -- the good news was that I
>managed to keep it off.
>
>I didn't do that well this time. One day, in which I
>had eaten very little between weighing, I managed to
>gain three pounds, which had to be from the way they
>were pushing the IV fluids at me. I have over the
>years heard women griping about water weight. I know
>what they're talking about now!
>
>Hospital food is certainly an excuse for losing
>weight. Now, it's no big secret that I'm diabetic and
>have been for many years. The problem is that as soon
>as you show up in a hospital and the word "diabetic"
>gets involved they automatically put you on a
>no-sugar, no-salt, no-flavor, no-fat, no-calorie,
>no-cholesterol, no-taste diet. For example, one
>morning I had "French toast" on the menu. What I got
>was two slices of bread, with no evidence of egg, or
>no evidence of toasting, either.
>
>One noon the menu said "homemade macaroni and cheese."
>To be honest, I would give it about a two on a scale
>of one to ten. Now, that's actually better than it
>sounds since I wouldn't give any macaroni and cheese
>more than about a four.
>
>To be honest, I was served a couple of meals I would
>have to say were pretty decent. One, for instance, was
>Swedish meatballs, which would have tasted pretty good
>had there been even a little bit of salt available.
>Mental note: the next time I have to go into a
>hospital, smuggle in a salt shaker.
>
>Since this stay in the hospital was totally unplanned,
>there were other things I would have liked to have
>with me, but didnt. I was lost without a computer
>available, which was especially irritating considering
>how computerized hospitals have become. The only thing
>that saved my sanity was that I managed to remember to
>ask Amanda to charge up my Kindle e-book reader and
>send it in, and thank goodness there were a couple
>books on it that I had been meaning to getting around
>to reading, but hadn't. The alternative would have
>been daytime TV, and I don't think I need to say any
>more about that.
>
>However, despite everything, I mostly had a good bunch
>of nurses and other staff members. They seemed
>dedicated and professional, and were mostly people I
>would like to have met under somewhat different
>circumstances.
>
>Sooner or later I will probably have to be in a
>hospital again. I hope I learned something from this
>time.
>
>-- Wes
Glad you are out of there. Being a Paraplegic I have been in and out of several hospitals for varying lengths of time spanning the last 50 years. Your experiences certainly rang true with me. As an example I once had a nurse wake me only to ask if I wanted a sleeping pill. I won't go into my response.
GB34
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