The Hospital Stay

Once I had been diagnosed with a stroke, the hospital wasn't about to give me a couple aspirins and send me on my way. As a result, I spent a night in the hospital while undergoing some diagnostic tests to determine what caused the event to happen. This was my first overnight in a hospital since the day I was born, so I got to experience a whole bunch of "hospitalisms".

First off, there's no such thing as "hurry" in hospital lingo. Mostly, you lie in a very uncomfortable hospital bed while a parade of doctors, nurses, residents, and God knows who else come by to poke, prod, and take blood samples. This is epecially true during the night, when someone comes by every 3 or 4 hours to take temperature and blood pressure readings. In my case, my roomate and I had different teams caring for us, so we got double the number of visits day and night. Our room was right across from the nurses station, so we also heard every phone call, dropped clipboard, and loud conversation from the phalanx of nurses staffing the floor. Needless to say, we didn't get much shut-eye, and even when we did manage to fall asleep, someone came by to shake us and ask us for our name and date of birth.

Next, I learned that once you're a captive audience, doctors are going to run every test they can charge to your bill, usually without telling you in advance. You may be just starting to eat your imitation salisbury steak after fasting the last 16 hours, but if an order comes down for an ultrasound, MRI, or CT scan at the same time, you better hope the nurses will smuggle you in a sandwich when you finally get back to your room later in the evening.

Finally, once they decide to discharge you, all the attention stops. Don't get me wrong, I was ecstatic when I learned I was going home, but I left with a whimper, not a bang. My nurse had just gotten a bouquet of flowers delivered to the floor, so she ran into my room, rattled off my discharge instructions, and disappeared, leaving me pretty much on my own. I didn't even get my wheelchair ride to the curb. I limped my way down to the parking lot, dragging my left foot behind me while trying not to fall. If it hadn't been for Mrs MercMan, I'd probably still be sitting on a bench somewhere on the hospital campus! By the time we got back to the house, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself in addition to being totally wiped out. The one silver lining to the whole mess is my determination to get better and work hard to make sure this never happens again.