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I’m lying in the hospital recovery area after surgery to remove a cyst the size of an English pea that had been leaning on my nerve. Incredibly painful, considering. The surgeon has just dropped the bomb that I can’t go home but must stay in the hospital overnight because of a ‘drainage’ problem. Shit!
Six hours later I’m still in the recovery area waiting for a bed upstairs with nothing to keep me occupied. No magazines, no iPad with my 900 books on it, and no TV to convey the cheery news (not) that abounds in our world today.
All I can do is overhear the suffering of others in nearby bays. Sylvia, right next door, had a hysterectomy and they are having trouble bringing her fully around.
“Sylvia,” says one nurse in a cheerful tone, “now we’re going to try to sit you up in a chair so you can wake up some more. It might hurt some. . .”
Some? Right after a hysterectomy?
As far as I know, Sylvia never made it to the chair because at last I’m wheeled out of the unit and taken upstairs to a room.
I’m pleasantly surprised by the room; it’s spacious, and though it has typical hospital colors, beige and faded blue, they are artfully arrayed in a modern pattern. I’m told it is a prototype for the rooms going into the new hospital wing.
The nurses are by and large nice and very busy.
Nice nurses + cheerful room = you’re still stuck in the damned hospital.
Although the nurses are better than those I had the last time I was incarcerated at the same hospital, they have me hooked up every which way but to the exit.
One improvement: your index finger is tapped and monitoring your pulse 24/7 so nobody has to come in every half hour to take it. The blood pressure, on the other hand, is taken at every opportunity, even if someone just did it a half hour before.
You would think that over the decades someone would have mastered the art of institutional cooking. The menu is quite pretty and gives you hope that things have changed. But when my grilled chicken sandwich arrives, it looks like a stone stacking people do by the ocean, the chicken and a fat bun are precariously balanced one on top of each other. Don’t even ask about my morning omelet, stuffed with canned mushrooms and flat and tough as a paving stone. The bagel, if one could call it that, was rubbery and could have served in a game of racquetball.
Finally, at 8:00 am Saturday I’m told I can go home. Yippee!
But first Tiki Tiki![1] A physical therapist saunters in and begins a lengthy list of questions, followed by dragging me around the nurses’ station. She informs me the occupational therapist will be next. She was sitting right outside my door when we returned then disappears for a half an hour. She assaults me with another long list of questions then takes me for a second drag around the nurses’ station.
I figure I’m finally going to be let go, but no – there’s the exit interview with the nurse. Jesus, freedom never felt so far away.
Finally, at 10:00 I am free to go, but wait! We need to take you down in a wheelchair. Well, okay. More time passes until an ill-tempered nurse arrives with something I’ve never seen before: a double-wide wheelchair! Apparently the only one she can find.
Was there ever better proof that a great many folks in our country are VLP (Very Large People)?
I roll around on the seat while Miss Prickly tries to navigate this ungainly vehicle in and out of the elevator, banging into the doors, and out to the front of the lobby.
“Your husband’s not here,” she crabs.
But I spy our trusty CRV and my even trustier husband Perry.
“Oh yes he is! Roll me out there!”
Perry jumps out of the car and races around to help me into the car, pushing the nurse not too gently out of the way, while I lob a weak ‘Thank you’ in her direction.
Free at last unless you consider the six to eight weeks of recovery time for the operation.
But it’s good enough for me.
[1] Ask me about this joke sometime.
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