How much time have you spent in hospitals? Do you loathe and fear them? Do you avoid visiting anyone in the hospital if you can?

Are you comfortable around sick people? Are you a natural nuturer? Or like me, do you stand awkwardly in a corner and hope nobody throws up or needs a nurse or anything?

-- Anonymous, February 02, 2001

Answers

I'm coming up on the year anniversary of basically my first hospital experience ever. My grandfather was admitted to the emergency room for not getting out of bed for three days, and my parents were out of town, so I spent 24 hours with him in the ER. It was, in a word, horrific. I found that the ER in real life is not all that different from the ER on television in terms of the chaos and really fucked up people -- both mentally and physically -- coming in. I washed my hands constantly, mainly because I needed something to do and because my grandfather was having bowel issues, and if I smell that brand of soap today, I instantly do a lovely combination of tearing up and gagging simultaneously. After thrice-daily visits to see him in Intensive Care for seven days, he died.

I was overwhelmed by the caliber of professionalism and the patience of the hospital staff, from the doctors to the nurses to the orderlies to every single person who in any way worked with my grandfather. One nurse sat by his bedside for two and a half hours to convince him to consent to having a catheter inserted. He wouldn't listen to the doctors or to me. She finally said, "If we cannot monitor your urine, you will die. Tonight." Somehow she said that with enough kindness and conviction that he finally agreed. How people can clean up other people's shit and keep a smile on their faces, both for the patient and for the family members, will never cease to amaze me. I'll never forget those people for the rest of my life.

-- Anonymous, February 02, 2001

I've been in hospitals in four capacities: 1)Visiting sick people I know 2)Hanging out with G. 3)Working 4)Being injured

I'm terrible at #1 (visiting). Awkward and stuff. But I haven't had anyone to visit since #4. And the most "intensive" visiting I've done was when I was thirteen, and my mom was in a car accident. She broke her neck and was in a circle bed for traction for forever. It was scary.

#2, hanging with G while he runs in to do something or while he's on call. In this case, I sort of ignore the hospital and the sick people factor, except for washing my hands a lot.

#3, working. I've done computer training for hospital staff. And in one case, our training room was on the floor, and bored patients would stop their shuffle to say hi or ask what the room was four. I had no problem talking to someone in a hospital gown towing an IV. But then, even though many of these people were very ill (we were next to an oncology ward) I didn't *know* any of them.

#4, as a patient. I was four the only time I was an inpatient. I had broken a bone badly and apparently worked the system for codeine and television. I was the four-year-old captain kangaroo watchin' codeiene stoner.

-- Anonymous, February 02, 2001

I've spent a lot of time in hospitals in the past. I always visit people in the hospital because I've been there and I know how damn lonely it is. Even though I LOATHE going and am not a nurturer, I still go because I care about the person. It's a sacrifice. Especially after my near death experience with stupid gallbladder surgery last summer.

If someone throws up, I high tail it out to get a nurse. Sorry but I'm not cleaning up puke. I only do that for my children.

-- Anonymous, February 02, 2001

I wouldn't say I'm a natural nurturer but my mother has worked in a hospital my entire life. They don't make me nervous at all. I also worked in her hospital throughout high school and college. I'm usually the first one in line to visit at hospitals because I know how boring they can be. I was an inpatient, once, for four days due to an acute asthma exacerbation. I was hyped up on steriods and didn't sleep the entire time. I was desperate for visitors.

Hospitals don't scare me because I'm usually pretty familiar with the equipment used and hospital procedures. The few times family members have been hospitalized for anything serious (dad-heart attack six years ago, mother was hit by a car while crossing the street a few years back) it did shock me when I first saw them. They looked small and weak in the hospital beds. Of course, when they got home and up and about again they looked perfectly normal. So I got used to the fact that there's a lot of psychology going on. YOU know they're ill; they're in the hospital. You percieve them to be differently than they normally are. It can be creepy when you witness the frailty of parents.

Not that I'm a doctor, Beth, but I'm betting they had your dad on O2 to prevent any problems with his lungs. Sometimes, after the anesthesia during surgery and periods of extended bed rest, fluid can build up in the lungs and people can develop pneumonia. My mom developed pneumonia after her (double) ankle surgery because she couldn't stand or walk at all and was basically flat on her back or slightly elevated for a week straight. It's not rare for older individuals to develop it after a major surgery. They were probably running a lung scan in Nuc Med (that's where I worked) as a cautionary measure. Nothing major to worry about there, I'd say they're probably just being careful if your dad seems fine to you. They like to watch out for the older folks. Man, I can't believe that your dad has had both knees replaced. That makes mine ache. Ouch.

-- Anonymous, February 02, 2001

No, unfortunately he was having trouble breathing or something, and I think they said his blood oxygen was too low. So they were worried about something specific. He wasn't on oxygen the first day after surgery.

I'm glad he had this knee replaced. It was his "good" knee -- the other one was destroyed in a car accident when I was 15, and after multiple knee surgeries he had no cartilage left and was having a lot of trouble walking. He had that one replaced last winter and has seemed fifteen years younger ever since. This knee wasn't so hot either, though, and it was slowing him down. He should be in really good shape once he's through with his physical therapy.

-- Anonymous, February 02, 2001

I've always been uncomfortable in hospitals. My mother didn't want todie there, she died at home. But whenever I'm in a hospital, I think of her. My nephew was in a couple of weeks ago. He had a severe infection on his legs that almost killed him. He handled it better than the adults did, I have to say. I am awkward during hospital visits. I have no idea what to say, how to behave. All I want to do is say, "Get better. Bye" and run like hell outta there. I wonder if I will ever change. But I suspect I won't. I think you've got the idea you're not alone in this stiff, uncomfortable club.

-- Anonymous, February 02, 2001

Man, I've been in hospitals *way* too many times. The funny thing is? I'm *still* not used to them! I get very freaked out, and panicked, the minute I know I have to go. Actually walking in, knowing I'll be there for awhile nearly sends me into a panic attack. My last stay was for 3 weeks, and damn was that miserable. The first week I was on morphine the whole time, so I don't really remember all that much (there is a tape of me on drugs right after the surgery and it's pretty hilarious - two guy friends teamed up to give each of my feet a massage, and I keep going on about how I'm a rock star because I've got the personal masseuse thing *and* drugs goin' on). The second week I was the non-stop problem girl. Bloating, gagging mixed with vomiting, retching for hours (horrible horrible horrible), and of course, poop girl. It sucked. They needed to see how my stomach was doing so they tried to shove a tube down my throat *without* drugging me. Not a good plan. So then they drugged me, and I still remember telling the tech "You know, that numbing spray - not only does it taste nothing like banana, it doesn't work". They also stiched an IV into my arm; a funky one where the line is divided in two and actually threads up a major artery to your heart so all the stuff they're pumping into you enters the blood stream at a major point so there aren't any mixture issues. Yeah, it's as fun as it sounds. But the nurses were *so* supercool. I mean just fabulous. REALLY fabulous.

Visiting people - no problem. I'm the first one to jump in the car and head on over. I'm likely to try for a visit before they're doctors feel they're ready. Probably because I know how comforting it is to hear familiar voices droning on around you or at you - even if you can't participate in the conversation. It also feels nice to be drifting in your drug haze with someone who loves you holding your hand or just telling you quietly about their day; keeps the whole freaky hospital factor at bay a bit. So yeah, no issues going to a hospital when it's to visit someone else. And I generally stand back until I'm sure they're up for company - or my company in particular.

-- Anonymous, February 02, 2001

Both of my parents are in the medical profession (dad's a surgeon; mom was an RN before babies) so growing up I viewed hospitals as fun places to visit my parents & scam peanut butter crackers & mess with the computer system.

I've been in the hospital a few times-- once for a bad allergic reaction. That was probably the freakiest. I was having a really hard time drawing a breath, my throat was closing up, the whole nine. As soon as I got into the little room, a ton of people descended on me and put stuff in my nose, mouth, around my arms, and into my veins. I was all rigged up while they waited for all of the treatments to work (luckily they did) and they sent me home a few hours later, all speedy from the epinephrine (I think).

Then during the last 6 months both of my grandparents have been in and out of the hospital for various life-threatening ailments. The worst was last summer when all of my dad's siblings flew down to fret and fawn over him. They all acted bizzarely, so much so that the nursing staff commented on it to my dad (who is now the chief of staff at the hospital). I tend to fall on the nurturing side of things, and I enjoying bringing things that will distract people from what is usually an unpleasant experience.

-- Anonymous, February 02, 2001

I had my tonsils out at 4 then had a hernia repair age 9. It was minor surgery but very traumatic for me.

I'm very uncomfortable visiting in hospitals. The smell makes me start getting nervous. I'm a lot better than I used to be, but I'm just tense the whole time. Visiting people is also weird for me because of how you see them in the hospital gown, the bag of pee, etc. Sometimes it's more intimate than I've been with that person, you know?

I visited my mom in the hospital when I was a teenager and (besides my fright) it was scary because she's one of those tough people who never admit they have a cold. Seeing her in pain, though she tried to hide it, was awful.

My hospital visits since then have mostly been to see my father in law who has numerous health problems and is in the hospital a couple of times a year. My tension at being in the hospital combines with the awkwardness of seeing him in a hospital gown. I feel like I shouldn't be there.

-- Anonymous, February 02, 2001

I spent Christmas at the hospital, babysitting my mother.

Mom has this irrational fear of doctors, and a great capacity for denial. Combined, this lead to her not seeing the doctor when it took six weeks for her to recover from the flu. She lost weight dramatically, lost her balance, fell down often, had chronic heartburn, drank many many cold drinks, and was on the toilet all the time. For months, I begged her over the phone to see a doctor. I was still in Edmonton at this point, so I couldn't physically drag her to the ER like I wanted to. Mom insisted she was fine. She had stopped waking around, and eventually she had to stay in bed. For three weeks.

Three days before I was to move home from Edmonton, Dad finally had enough. Mom hadn't been able to get out of bed, and he had to buy her adult diapers. Unable to believe that Mom was "Just fine" any more, Dad brought her to the ER. The doctors said there was something wrong with her liver, and that she had tumours in her breasts and her spine. For two days, we believed that Mom had cancer, and I was very angry that she hadn't seen a doctor until things got very bad. I was very afraid that she might die. I was especially afraid that she might die before I got home.

The hospital that Mom was at did not have the best testing facilities, so they sent her to the Montreal General. The people at the General not only did not find any tumours, they diagnosed Mom as having a raging liver infection as well as many abscesses on her liver and gall bladder. They also discovered she had diabetes. When I found out that there was no sign of cancer, I was furious at the doctors at the previous hospital for putting my family through an unnecessary cancer scare.

At the General, doctors installed drains in my mother's liver and gall bladder to drain the infection, put her on heavy antibiotics and painkillers, and they had her on oxygen and an IV drip. When I got into Montreal on the 23rd of December, I went from the airport to the hospital. When I saw my mother, I was beyond freaked out. My mother was a robust 55 year old woman when I left home. She was overweight, but she looked good, and she was bright, active and intelligent.

What I saw was the opposite.

The woman in the bed lacked any muscle tone. She was thin and bony, and her skin hung off of her like a baggy sweater. She hadn't had a haircut in ages, her face sagged, and her eyes were glazed over. Her voice, when she spoke, was weak and slurred. This frail old woman in the hospital bed could not be my mother! She looked more like 70 than 58!

I went over and gave my mother a kiss on the cheek, and her skin felt like tissue paper stretched over wax. I made nice with Mom, and then I went into the hallway to talk to my father and brother.

That's when I freaked out. I blew up at Dad for waiting so long to take her to the hospital. He was her husband, and he was supposed to take care of her (I know that he was probably beating himself up over the same issues, but I was so angry that my parents had let things get this bad). I started to cry, and I gave myself exactly five minutes to do so. Then when it was over, I wiped my face, slapped a smile back on it, and went in to see my mother again.

Mom was in the hospital for a month. I spent almost every day at the hospital, keeping her company, reading to her, doing crosswords with her, etc. She got better and better every day. By Christmas day she was sitting up in her bed, and by new years she had taken her first tentaitve steps in almost a month. Her liver was draining very well, and her blood sugar was stabilizing. They stopped giving her morphine, and her speech and motor control improved dramatically. That helped a lot, for me, because part of the big shock on seeing my mom that first time was because she was all doped up. That's why she seemed so old.

During Mom's stay in the hospital, Dad developed a remarkable talent for guilt-tripping. If we weren't at the hospital, Dad would demand to know when we were going to be there. When we were at the hospital, he'd bitch us out for not being there earlier. It got to the point where I wouldn't return his calls, because they were all the same: "When are you coming to the hospital? Your mom's all alone right now, and I have to go to work..."

I also started to stay away from the hospital because of the smell. Sick smell, drainage smell, catheter smell... I can still smell it. A sweet, foul odor. If I smell something similar now, it sends me into a panic, because I'm right back at the hospital, holding my mother's crepe-paper-and-wax hand and trying not to cry.

I just got an update from my roommate/pseudo-sister. She spoke to Mom last night when I was out. Mom, who has been home for three weeks, is now up and around by herself. She was cleaning the kitchen today, but she can't mop or vacuum, because of the drainage holes. She's getting better in leaps and bounds, and now that she's better, I have told her that if she gets so much as a hang nail, I am taking her to the hospital myself, no matter how "fine" she feels.

-- Anonymous, February 02, 2001

Bittersweetie, that's a horrible story. I'm glad your mom is doing better now.

Lizzie, I hear you about the hospital gowns. You have to be good at averting your eyes without being obvious.

My dad is doing much better today, and he's going home tomorrow. Yay.

-- Anonymous, February 02, 2001

I dislike hospitals, and used to really dread going to them. Then, in October 1999, a close friend was out on a quiet trail ride, and her horse fell with her. Her spinal cord was injured and she was taken by helicopter to the nearest trauma center. (She was injured on the C4 vertebrae, the same site as Christopher Reed, but the cord was just bruised, not severed.)

She had no local close family, so three close friends became "family." She was in ICU for two or three days, and then was in a rehab ward for three weeks. I went every day, except for two days when I though I was getting a cold. (The first week was the horse, since I volunteered to do the evening feed at the small boarding barn that my friend owns. After feeding the horses, and playing and feeding the dogs, I would head over to the hospital. After the first week, we got a schedule set up where I didn't have to go to the barn every night since we had tons of volunteers.)

Even though my friend kept insisting that I shouldn't feel like I had to come out every day, she was always so delighted to see me that I kept going. And it was neat to see the progression that she made from being almost unable to move to being able to go on walks with me her last few days at the hospital. She still, even a year later, hasn't completely recovered, but most of her remaining symptoms are clumsiness when she is tired, and weird phantom sensations.

I found that going to the hospital daily got me desensitized to doing so (and of course it helped that I was visiting someone who was improving, not deteriorating.) I was able to visit a relative in a nursing home in November several days without getting that old queasy feeling in my stomach. And the nursing home was a lot more depressing than the hospital, even though it seemed well run as such things go.

-- Anonymous, February 02, 2001

My mother has been in and out of hospitals for the last sixteen years and now bedridden at home for quite a while. We all still hate and fear hospitals. I can take comfort in the fact that I'm at least not the worst freaker-out and denier in the family (that would be my father) even though I'm also not the best coper (that would be my brother). Bittersweetie, I've been through something very similar - much sympathy. It's hard enough when people have been taking proper care and they still get sick; it's even worse when someone, the sick person and/or the partner, was negligent.

I think the psychological damage of chronic illness can be worse than the physical damage. The depression. The despair. The jealousy of the healthy. The uncertainty. The worst thing about visiting my mother is when she can't decide whether my role is to amuse her with stories of the outside world, to listen to her complaints, or to pick up things she's dropped. So I'll be in the middle of a story that I think is holding her attention, because she asked me to entertain her, and she'll interrupt me with a stream of requests that show she wasn't listening at all and I've failed to take her away from the dreadful reality of her physical condition. Or I'll be in practical "let's get this straightened out" mode, tidying up, and she'll ask me a highly intrusive personal question that really should have been preceded by 20 minutes of conversational buildup, but I guess in a hospital people feel they could die any moment and they're entitled to leave the amenities aside.

-- Anonymous, February 03, 2001

I used to be terrified of hospitals until I went to work in a medical office that was next door to one and I found I was there all the time. I also drive AIDS clients to and from doctors' appointments, so I'm around the sick all the time. Still, I'm not the most natural "comforter" in the world, more a function of my being basically shy, rather than my being afraid of being in a hospital. I generally do great in a crisis. Unfortunately, I've had a lot of practice.

-- Anonymous, February 03, 2001

It's funny. I've always felt completely at home in a hospital setting. I love hospitals. The cold, clinical atmosphere illuminated by unforgiving fluorescent lighting and buffed, shiny floors, nurses busily darting back and forth, doctors' brows furrowed in concentration. Personally, I would rather die in a hospital than anywhere else. I'd hate the thought of my body being discovered sometime after my death. Especially in my apartment - I haven't gotten around to straightening it.

I've always felt comforted by hospitals. Even now having volunteered in an emergency room for the past year, I feel like being in a hospital is a part of who I am. It sounds weird, but for anyone who watched the show "Felicity", the character Elena said the same thing. I seriously doubt I'll be saying this 20 years down the line since I plan on starting my nursing career within a few years, but for now this is how I feel. Not to mention, I don't know what loved ones I'll lose during that time. Hopefully, not any. But until then, hospitals are the place to be for me.

That's not to say I like being around sick people. I don't. The majority of the people who come into our emergency room aren't "nasty" sick - vomiting, pooping, bleeding, and what have you. But when they are, the nurses and housekeeping staff are pretty good at handling it.

Am I good around sick people? I'd have to be, otherwise what would I be doing volunteering around them? But I can truly understand what it's like to not know what to say. You're afraid you'll say the wrong thing, you're not sure what they need to be comfortable, (you could ask but that might be annoying), you don't want to touch anything because you're afraid you'll break it (either your loved one or the machinery attached to them). Somehow, though, it just doesn't faze me. It's like second nature, to be around.

Beth, for your future reference, know that you really don't have to do or say anything. More often than not, just being there is what counts.

-- Anonymous, February 04, 2001

My father is 72 and has been in good health all of these years. He fell off a ladder (while helping a neighbor build a storage building in his backyard!) and broke his hip, along with a lot of other complicating factors. This was the first time he'd been in the hospital in years. For me, it was shocking to see him "like that." Because of the complications, he was in the hospital for two weeks. I have a large family and am the youngest, so in a way, I'm lucky. I was able to be with him without having to be "responsible" for a whole lot - I wasn't really the person cast as the "nurse" or "entertainer," etc. I saw my mom and sisters each taking on certain roles.

I just made a point to be there - I felt it was easier NOT to try to take on a certain role, but to treat Dad like he was still my Dad. It must have been hard to have so many people babying him and treating him like he was the child. I'd like to think that he appreciated me being "normal" around him. Even if I did do some crying by myself that week with the realization that even thought he's amazingigly active, he's still 72.

I think I'm becoming more comfortable in hospitals because I work for a healthcare organization now and am in and out of our hospitals from time to time. At the same time, I hear some things that make my head spin because I am in the system - so this makes me a little more fearful whenever someone I know is in a hospital.

Liz

-- Anonymous, February 05, 2001

Thanks, everyone, for your kind words. It was very hard for me to post all of that.

I think the thing that angers me the most about what happened to Mom is that it was completely unnecessary. If she had seen a doctor in July when she was sick, she would have been given antibiotics, told to take it easy for a few days, and sent on her merry way. I'm pretty sure that the liver infection she had at the hospital is what was plaguing her in the summertime. But instead, despite obvious signs that her health was failing, she maintained that she was fine and got mad when anyone suggested otherwise. Every time she called me, she told me how much weight she had lost, and every time, I told her that dramatic weight loss was a bad sign. She told me I was just jealous.

She told me last night that she can get up the stairs by herself now-- considering that a month ago she couldn't even walk, I am very happy. But despite all that, my mother will never fully recover from this. She is now an old woman. Two and a half years ago she was middle aged, but now she's old, and no matter how well she gets, her health is ruined forever. And she's not even 60. I am so angry about that, because mom could have saved herself a lot of pain and suffering, and her health and youth to boot, if she had just listened to her body when it told her she was sick.

And I am also angry at my dad. He was enabling her in a big way. He could tell she was sick, but instead of forcing her to see a doctor, he just let her tell him she was fine. She was deteriorating before his eyes, and he did nothing. It had to get to the point where she was soiling herself in bed before he grew balls big enough to stand up to her and take her to the ER. If he had waited even a day or two longer, the infection would have travelled to her brain, and she would have slipped into a coma and possibly died.

And it all could have been easily avoided.

-- Anonymous, February 05, 2001

i'm really good at the hospital when someone else is ill. i am usually the family member called upon to translate from the medical to regular english and i enjoy digging into illnesses. i go into work mode and forget that the patient is someone i love... they become a patient, like all the rest of my patients (however much less likely to bite me!)

watch out when i am the patient however! i once told an ER nurse to call my technician so she could put an IV catheter in after the nurse missed twice. (i also told her she was using the wrong gauge catheter, the same size i would use on a cow... and to her credit she refrained from calling me a cow after that). i signed myself out of the hospital AMA after a horrible car accident where i suffered head injuries and usually self diagnose and treat most things.

yes i am a *bad* patient... most doctors are!

-- Anonymous, February 05, 2001

Well, this is timely. I had an emergency appendectomy on Super Bowl Sunday. The hospital is wonderful place when you don't feel well. In fact, they tried to discharge me after one day and I begged for another night, which they gave me because I still had a slight temp. True, they wake you up every few hours to take vitals, but morphine helps a girl fall right back to sleep. The food was great, the nursing staff was wonderful. I found my hospital experience to be a positive one, despite the pain. As for visiting people in the hospital, that's harder. Watching people suffer is difficult for me.

-- Anonymous, February 05, 2001

I spent this summer in the hospital with my grandmother. You see, about ten years or so ago, she had some hardware put into her spine to strengthen her spine (as it was being deteriorated/affected by arthritis - I can't remember specifics, that time was too hazy for me). Over the past few years, the hardware started shifting, and itself was becoming misshapen, so it had to come out, and fresh hardware had to go in, as the pain for her was unbearable (she would sit up for maybe 1/2 hour at a time, and go back to lie down, only on her left side, to lie on her right side would mean unbearable pain).

So this summer, she had the surgery. The surgery took longer than expected, my grandmother resisted the anaesthesia more than expected, and as a result, for the first two days, she was in ICU, incredibly swollen and with a breathing tube down her throat (she was swollen because she was on her stomach for about seven hours, and fluids draining as they do...). My mom and I were at the hospital after the surgery, and when we saw her, we both burst into tears, although quiet ones. Gran's eyes were so swollen she couldn't see, but she could hear. And since she was so doped up on all her pain meds, well. She traced several Chinese characters on my mom's hand saying, 'Take Claire home, she's hungry and needs food,' which made Mom cry even more, because that's just like Gran.

After spending a week recovering in the hospital, she was transferred into a nursing home for rehab. This rehab center was horrible. My grandmother would ring for her meds, the nurses would come in and turn her buzzer off, and ignore her for several HOURS. This stopped in a big time when, on two seperate occasions, my mom and I did the Shirley MacLaine "Terms of Endearment" speech on the nurses, plus reported them to the state. I can't even begin to go into the atrocities I saw happen to other people at that particular nursing home. It was horrid. We couldn't wait to get her out of there.

So the short of it, I am okay with hospitals. At least they're clean and sterile. Unlike the nursing home my grandmother was forced to go to because that's all Medicaid/Medicare would pay for. That's another thread, entirely, however... 'nuff ramblin on my part!! -Claire

-- Anonymous, February 05, 2001

My father just had a mild stroke. He has been in the hospital for a week, mainly waiting for tests. (We live far from the hospital)
He is the toughest 76 year old I know. He is covered in arthritis, and because he was wounded in WWII, his leg and spine especially hurt.
The veterans hospital he is at is a wonderful one. The doctors allowed us to be there when they talked to him, when they examined him. We were able to fill in the places my father had forgotten about. The doctors treated him with such respect and consideration. The nursing staff were also great, cracking jokes, mindful of my father's pain.
The respect is really important. If it came to be a point where he was talked down to, talked to as a child, the whole situation would have been all that much worse.
My father's face is droopy on one side, but still can move his arms and legs, walk. His vision in one eye has been affected, hopefully not permanently. It is so odd that one little aspirin would have prevented it.
I haven't gotten over my feelings about the hospitals. But it does help if you have a hospital staff that understands how the patient and the family feels.
Wahiaronkwas

-- Anonymous, March 21, 2001