Wednesday, March 01, 2006
UNDERSTANDING PROGRESS.....I'M TRYING.
How many of you have spent time in a hospital? Either as a family member or the patient? I have spent a good deal of time around the medical community with close family, friends…… and three times with the birth of my children. Other than a couple of colonoscopies, that has been my record as a patient. However, I have spent years sitting by bedsides, anxiously watching loved ones go through valley’s of pain and recuperation.
I realize this doesn’t make me an expert on the medical profession but I have noticed changes over the years that seem strange at the least. With the birth of my first child I was ordered to stay in bed for two weeks. When child number two came along three years later, I was informed that hospital stay after childbirth was five days. By now, I was wanting to stay longer, knowing full well what awaited me once I got home. There would be an active three-year old and a new baby.
I survived.
With child number three I was ordered to get out of bed the same day only hours after the baby was born. I told the Drill Sergeant who was posing as a nurse that she surely didn’t mean ME because I had just delivered six hours ago. She pulled the covers back, pointed to the bedside potty and told me to get up, get out and get busy using the facility. I felt like I’d been hit by a Mack truck but I was in no shape to argue. In three days I was carted down the hall in a wheel chair with baby number three in my arms to reunite with a six year old and a three year old looking at me like I’d given them up for adoption. I can still see their accusing faces.
For all the dear family members who have passed on and the time spent with them in different hospitals I learned a lot. A lot about medical people, about fellow patients in the rooms…..and the many waiting rooms I shared with the public. All the above comes down to this. There are folks who try their best to meet your need…whatever that might be and as best they can. There are others who are not “there” for you and let you know it.
That brings us to the waiting room. There are those who love to give you long recitals about their reason for being there and you are forced to look interested even though you are not. There are children fussing and crying because they don’t want to be there…..they’ve heard the story too many times and they want to go home. There are people who pry into your reason for being there…..even when you don’t feel like talking. There are “squatters” who save their choice spot by rotating family members…..this insures their sleeping area each night.
God bless the people who give you a little space and quiet, whether they are the staff, other patients or visitors. It is a difficult time for all. For the ones who go the extra mile, who try to lighten your load and who leave you with a smile……these are all precious commodities in the waiting room.
Times have changed now. Whereas children were not allowed in the rooms with the patient previously….whereas even family couldn’t go in a room if there were three visitors already….now the rooms are full of friends and family gawking while the baby is being born or someone has just come back from surgery…. loud noise with all the laughing and joking going on, cell phones going off and staff running around in colored clothing making it impossible to know who the nurses or doctors are.
The older I become the less I understand the masses who make sure they are bombarded with noise and activity 24-7. Hospitals who used to enforce calm and quiet to insure the patient’s rest have given in to the demands of the general public. The walls are wildly painted in bright color to give the patient a more “homey” feeling…along with halls and rooms full of people coming and going. It’s more like a hotel than a hospital. Visiting hours? Anytime you drop in!
It’s been a while since I’ve seen white uniforms and the white caps which designated the school the nurse graduated from. Old people fuss about changes and it’s full well because some of the changes are not for the better. I am wondering what the kids of today will fuss about when they are the “old folks”……I don’t see how our world can become louder and more disorganized, but I’m sure there will be a way.
Us old timers are like “voices crying in the wilderness” but some things would have been better left the way they were…hospitals being one of them. It will only take another 25-years before today’s young people have some idea of what I’m talking about…….
Until tomorrow,
Essentially Esther
I realize this doesn’t make me an expert on the medical profession but I have noticed changes over the years that seem strange at the least. With the birth of my first child I was ordered to stay in bed for two weeks. When child number two came along three years later, I was informed that hospital stay after childbirth was five days. By now, I was wanting to stay longer, knowing full well what awaited me once I got home. There would be an active three-year old and a new baby.
I survived.
With child number three I was ordered to get out of bed the same day only hours after the baby was born. I told the Drill Sergeant who was posing as a nurse that she surely didn’t mean ME because I had just delivered six hours ago. She pulled the covers back, pointed to the bedside potty and told me to get up, get out and get busy using the facility. I felt like I’d been hit by a Mack truck but I was in no shape to argue. In three days I was carted down the hall in a wheel chair with baby number three in my arms to reunite with a six year old and a three year old looking at me like I’d given them up for adoption. I can still see their accusing faces.
For all the dear family members who have passed on and the time spent with them in different hospitals I learned a lot. A lot about medical people, about fellow patients in the rooms…..and the many waiting rooms I shared with the public. All the above comes down to this. There are folks who try their best to meet your need…whatever that might be and as best they can. There are others who are not “there” for you and let you know it.
That brings us to the waiting room. There are those who love to give you long recitals about their reason for being there and you are forced to look interested even though you are not. There are children fussing and crying because they don’t want to be there…..they’ve heard the story too many times and they want to go home. There are people who pry into your reason for being there…..even when you don’t feel like talking. There are “squatters” who save their choice spot by rotating family members…..this insures their sleeping area each night.
God bless the people who give you a little space and quiet, whether they are the staff, other patients or visitors. It is a difficult time for all. For the ones who go the extra mile, who try to lighten your load and who leave you with a smile……these are all precious commodities in the waiting room.
Times have changed now. Whereas children were not allowed in the rooms with the patient previously….whereas even family couldn’t go in a room if there were three visitors already….now the rooms are full of friends and family gawking while the baby is being born or someone has just come back from surgery…. loud noise with all the laughing and joking going on, cell phones going off and staff running around in colored clothing making it impossible to know who the nurses or doctors are.
The older I become the less I understand the masses who make sure they are bombarded with noise and activity 24-7. Hospitals who used to enforce calm and quiet to insure the patient’s rest have given in to the demands of the general public. The walls are wildly painted in bright color to give the patient a more “homey” feeling…along with halls and rooms full of people coming and going. It’s more like a hotel than a hospital. Visiting hours? Anytime you drop in!
It’s been a while since I’ve seen white uniforms and the white caps which designated the school the nurse graduated from. Old people fuss about changes and it’s full well because some of the changes are not for the better. I am wondering what the kids of today will fuss about when they are the “old folks”……I don’t see how our world can become louder and more disorganized, but I’m sure there will be a way.
Us old timers are like “voices crying in the wilderness” but some things would have been better left the way they were…hospitals being one of them. It will only take another 25-years before today’s young people have some idea of what I’m talking about…….
Until tomorrow,
Essentially Esther
