15 September 2013
Observations About Hospital Life
15/09/13 14:48
OK I’m home again. Five days in the hospital was quite enough. Don’t get me wrong, Nanaimo Regional Hospital has first rate facilities but it’s still a hospital, and life in a hospital is not like life on the outside. There is a certain institutional aspect, a similarity to prison life that is unavoidable. You get fed at certain times. You have a room and a roommate and someone else determines if you can stay or have to move. Clothing is taken away from the patients/inmates and you have to wear a uniform marking you as Not The Staff. Someone can come by at literally all hours and ask you questions or do a test on you. There is an arcane sequence of rewards, for example it was the second day before I was given a fork to eat my jello. Apparently I’d pleased the warden.
And only some people are allowed to have a knife.
There were a number of things about living in the hospital that I found interesting. For example, the nurses don’t mind calling the overnight shift the “graveyard shift”. I’d have thought that would be in bad taste but they were OK with it. There also seems to be a surprising amount of interest in how my plumbing is working. The last time I got this many questions about if I had to go, or if I had been able to go I was two.
That I could live without.
What also surprised me was how fast they pushed me to get up and moving. The first day after surgery they were already insisting I get up and walk. That day it was just around the room but soon I was wandering the hallways. At first I did have a “happy button” to administer a bit of painkiller as needed. They took that away on the third day. That was the day they removed the catheter as well. All of this added to the “this is a hospital not a resort” message that they were pushing. They want you up and out ASAP, which is probably a good thing. Now, I have to mention here that I’d heard all sorts of bad stories about catheters but I gotta’ say they have some real advantages. I mean it is amazingly convenient. You don’t have to think about peeing at all. It just happens. When they took it out suddenly I had to start waking up at night and walking to the bath. I mean how annoying was that? I really think the catheter companies are missing a market among hardcore sports fans and computer gamers. They could clean up (so to speak).
On the upside, for a few days I was a really tough guy. I mean sure some people have piercings but I had even better. They’d closed up my incisions with rows of staples. For a week it looked like I had zippers installed in my stomach. It doesn’t get more hard core than that. But then on Saturday they removed them and I went back to plain old me. Much like the 90% of all hard core biker tattoos that get washed off before work on Monday, my ‘piercings’ were just a passing affectation.
I do have a question to the medical professionals in the audience. What is the weird connection between my stomach and my shoulders. For some reason when the area in my lower abdomen that they worked on got irritated, I also felt pain in my shoulder. Most often under my right clavicle but also on my back just above the scapulas. In fact, sometimes it was the only place I’d feel pain. This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered this either. I asked the doctor but he just said it was normal. I asked one of my nurses and she thought it was due to the gas they used in the laparoscopic surgery migrating to the highest point when I was sitting up. Whatever the reason it’s really weird. Do any of you know why lower abdominal post surgical pain would show up in my shoulders?
However as odd and alien as this whole experience was I still had to be me. For example, When we were checking in, the person asked me if I wanted to list a religious preference (presumably for diet restrictions or counselling or such). I asked if Pessimism was a religion. Then after surgery I’d discovered that the paper coverings on the hospital drinking straws were loose. I was able to surprise Marsha (and others) when they came into the room by shooting the covers at them blowgun fashion. Then there was the time the nurse came in to give me my twice daily Heprin injection. The nurse asked me where I wanted the shot. I pointed to the other patient in the room and said, “How about in him?”
But the best was on the day of my surgery. On the way into the operating room the head nurse, a very senior, very serious, very experienced character, let me know that before they started, the doctor would stop the whole operation for a second. He would then tell everyone what procedure they were there for, just to make sure everyone is in the same page before the first scalpel was picked up or CC of anesthetic administered. I replied “That’s a good idea. I like the idea of a pause to make sure everyone understand I’m here for breast implants.” That caught her off guard and she snorted and started to laugh. Then just as quickly she caught herself, switched back to her cool professional demeanour and said I shouldn’t joke about that.
I win.
Doug & Marsha
PIX: I'm Home
And only some people are allowed to have a knife.
There were a number of things about living in the hospital that I found interesting. For example, the nurses don’t mind calling the overnight shift the “graveyard shift”. I’d have thought that would be in bad taste but they were OK with it. There also seems to be a surprising amount of interest in how my plumbing is working. The last time I got this many questions about if I had to go, or if I had been able to go I was two.
That I could live without.
What also surprised me was how fast they pushed me to get up and moving. The first day after surgery they were already insisting I get up and walk. That day it was just around the room but soon I was wandering the hallways. At first I did have a “happy button” to administer a bit of painkiller as needed. They took that away on the third day. That was the day they removed the catheter as well. All of this added to the “this is a hospital not a resort” message that they were pushing. They want you up and out ASAP, which is probably a good thing. Now, I have to mention here that I’d heard all sorts of bad stories about catheters but I gotta’ say they have some real advantages. I mean it is amazingly convenient. You don’t have to think about peeing at all. It just happens. When they took it out suddenly I had to start waking up at night and walking to the bath. I mean how annoying was that? I really think the catheter companies are missing a market among hardcore sports fans and computer gamers. They could clean up (so to speak).
On the upside, for a few days I was a really tough guy. I mean sure some people have piercings but I had even better. They’d closed up my incisions with rows of staples. For a week it looked like I had zippers installed in my stomach. It doesn’t get more hard core than that. But then on Saturday they removed them and I went back to plain old me. Much like the 90% of all hard core biker tattoos that get washed off before work on Monday, my ‘piercings’ were just a passing affectation.
I do have a question to the medical professionals in the audience. What is the weird connection between my stomach and my shoulders. For some reason when the area in my lower abdomen that they worked on got irritated, I also felt pain in my shoulder. Most often under my right clavicle but also on my back just above the scapulas. In fact, sometimes it was the only place I’d feel pain. This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered this either. I asked the doctor but he just said it was normal. I asked one of my nurses and she thought it was due to the gas they used in the laparoscopic surgery migrating to the highest point when I was sitting up. Whatever the reason it’s really weird. Do any of you know why lower abdominal post surgical pain would show up in my shoulders?
However as odd and alien as this whole experience was I still had to be me. For example, When we were checking in, the person asked me if I wanted to list a religious preference (presumably for diet restrictions or counselling or such). I asked if Pessimism was a religion. Then after surgery I’d discovered that the paper coverings on the hospital drinking straws were loose. I was able to surprise Marsha (and others) when they came into the room by shooting the covers at them blowgun fashion. Then there was the time the nurse came in to give me my twice daily Heprin injection. The nurse asked me where I wanted the shot. I pointed to the other patient in the room and said, “How about in him?”
But the best was on the day of my surgery. On the way into the operating room the head nurse, a very senior, very serious, very experienced character, let me know that before they started, the doctor would stop the whole operation for a second. He would then tell everyone what procedure they were there for, just to make sure everyone is in the same page before the first scalpel was picked up or CC of anesthetic administered. I replied “That’s a good idea. I like the idea of a pause to make sure everyone understand I’m here for breast implants.” That caught her off guard and she snorted and started to laugh. Then just as quickly she caught herself, switched back to her cool professional demeanour and said I shouldn’t joke about that.
I win.
Doug & Marsha
PIX: I'm Home