Hospital Stay

If you're ever feeling under the weather, and think the hospital might be a good place to visit for some much needed rest, you're wrong.

After my brief stay there I am an EXPERT.

The problem may have started with me. Maybe it was my fault that I went to the emergency room when I was sick AND tired. Perhaps both issues were too much for this particular hospital to handle. Either way, if somebody is sick, and the best prescription the ER doctor can offer is "rest" and then insists on admitting you, you've got yourself a pickle.

So, skipping past the lengthy and inconvenient triage portion of the Emergency Room, I'll take you straight into the awkwardly sectioned-off-with-curtains portion. I got there at about 10:15, which you should also try to avoid. 11pm is a popular shift change time, and being able to stick with the same doctor offers some much needed consistency for a speedy diagnosis. But either way, the seemingly unnecessary questions about bowel movements (yuck) and other such personal questions were a breeze, comparatively speaking. The worst part was the other patients.

Now I do have a heart. I offer this as a disclaimer because the baby with the 105 temperature next door was probably very sick and uncomfortable. Guess what? So was I. And the gunshot victim that was rushed in quickly thereafter? Probably in much more pain than the child. Arguably, however, his was self inflicted. For the cherry on top of self inflicted ER visits, though -- my third roommate was a passed-out drunk. But not for long! She woke up in enough time to be annoying for the following two and a half hours as she sobered up. Needless to say, rest in the ER is impossible.

So when they asked if they could admit me for observation, my first question -- at 3am -- was: "Are they going to let me sleep upstairs?" The doctor responded quickly and assuredly. Also, however, inaccurately.

After the paperwork (which must be complicated, because it took them plenty long to fill it out), I was taken upstairs around 4:30am. They proceeded to ask me the EXACT SAME QUESTIONS as the other two doctors I had already seen. The only difference was this time there was more of them. Apparently the hospitalist (that I never actually saw, but prescribed me everything while I was there) "had to have these answered before he administered me any more anti-nausea or pain meds". Well, when I started throwing up again halfway through the questions at 5:15, the nurse decided it would be better patient care to go ahead and give them to me then.

I then proceeded to fall in and out of sleep in 5-10 minute increments until somebody would come in, insisting that I needed one of the following things checked:

• blood pressure
• temperature
• heart rate
• IV site
• level of pain (on a scale from 1-10)
• severity of my nausea
• swelling in my ankles
• my comfort level

There are a few other things that needed to be checked. However, my comfort level remained low, and my irritability remained quite elevated. After FOURTEEN HOURS of this, the doctor that I had been waiting on to discharge me came up to check on me at 6:30pm. I had been in the hospital 21 hours at this point, with approximately 4 hours of sleep total. Needless to say, when they finally released me at 7:15pm, I was more than ready to go! The 15 hours I slept once I got home definitely made up for what I lost in the hospital.

So here is my advice to you as a future patient:

• Go just after a shift change (7am, 3pm, 7pm, 11pm)
• Be well rested
• Have some scripture on patience memorized
• Write down the questions they ask you so you're prepared for the second, and third, and fourth rounds
• Don't have them put the IV site on the inside of your elbow (whenever you bend it, the machine will beep until the nurse readjusts the needle)

And for all of you in the medical field, this is for you:

• Don't tell the doctor things you haven't checked with the patient about
• When in doubt, look at the chart!
• Don't tell the patient one thing, and the doctor another (or the patient's family..)
• If someone is vomiting, nausea is probably one of their symptoms