Scene from the Soviet Union, or business as usual?

I was brought to a local  hospital emergency room due to shortness of breath at 6 p.m.  I was there until 4 a.m.  No explanation was given to those in the waiting room.  At around 10:30 p.m a young man who was accompanying his wife lost his patience and began to remonstrate loudly.

  Immediately, this young man was surrounded by 6 security guards and driven out of the building. I attempted to record this on my phone but one of the security guards made me stop.

  The rest of the patients either slept, purchased snacks at the snack machines and ate them, or stared aat their cell phones.

  At 4 a.m., a nurse came and got me.  She explained that there was a shortage of rooms and a shortage of nurses.  There were doctors waiting who were unable to see the patients because there was no room in which they could see them.  I complained, jokingly, that people could be found dead in this emergency room.  She admitted that this had actually happened.  She was not joking.

  I can't complain about the care I was given.  The doctors and nurses were very professional and thorough, except that they neglected to ask what medications I was already taking.  However, I had brought my medications with me and was allowed to take them, after the doctor had been consulted and permitted it.

  Imagine what this scene would be like if we were all on Medicare--better yet, imagine the scene in the UK, where patients are made to wait for life-saving surgery for months, or until they die of their diseases.

Florence Nightingale, call your office

I am not dead, contrary to rumor, not even close.

My life, or my health, was saved by doctors and nurses of various local institutions, and I am grateful to them.

However, gratitude is the most short-lived emotion, so I am ready to bitch and moan about cleanliness, or the lack thereof.  I was in the infectious disease ward.  Everyone who came in had to put on a garment like a hazmat suit, even if they only brought a pill or a blanket. But the floor was not cleaned once in four days.  There was something--I won't specify what-- on the floor in the bathroom, which had also not been cleaned.  For a moment I flirted with the possibility of cleaning it up myself, but sanity prevailed, so I told the nurse about it.  She immediately told someone, and a maintenance person was sent up.

The maintenance person said nothing, but every atom of her being bristled with the injustice of the thing.  Her body was eloquent with disapproval.  However, she did clean the floor.

Then I was transferred to a nursing home, where the same standard of cleanliness, or lack thereof, was apparent.  Someone came in with a broom and dustpan to remove whatever had spilled on the floor, if it was the size of a kernel of corn or larger.  The toilet overflowed twice, and someone wiped up the water on the floor, but no soap was applied.

Sanitation is something that interests me, for personal reasons.  My father died because an infected pacemaker was implanted in his body and he could not fight off the infection. So I consider the mop, the broom, and the vacuum cleaner vital to taking care of sick people.

Hospital red alert!

So Mr Charm broke his femur, and was taken to the hospital, where they set his bone. They made three neat little incisions--arthroscopic, don't you know. We have a view of the river this time, which beats last time, when we had a view of a cemetery.

However, Mr C has a roommate who is deaf, and confused. The nurse who was attending him raised her voice in an effort to make him understand. And what a voice! A fine Wagnerian soprano which caused the bedpans to rattle. Really--it was an assault on the ears and the nerves.

This hospital did not have a guy riding a huge floor polisher, but of course we were there on the weekend, and maybe their floor polishing man works Monday to Friday.

However, they did make a serious medication error--one that I've corrected several times, but which persists on the hospital database. Tomorrow I will talk to the doctor. I will not shriek! I will not shriek! No! Will not...

Could I be fated to enter the Guinness Book of World Records as the person who had two relatives murdered by hospitals in one month?

I asked my uncle many years ago what the date was when doctors started curing more patients than they killed. He looked pained and said he wasn't sure we had passed that date yet.

I will calm down. Have a cup of tea. Serious sedation is called for. Where are those beta blockers?

Hospitals are dangerous

My father is in the hospital right now.

Among the mysteries of modern life is the  disappearance of the notion that hospitals should be quiet.   Remember those signs that used to be posted on the street?  Or am I revealing my age?

I visited my dad yesterday and was surprised by how noisy it was. Everyone appears to be shrieking at everyone else, unless they are too sick to move.  There is a clatter of trays and other equipment,  personnel coming and going and filling each other in on their private lives, greeting old friends and just gabbing.  To add to the confusion, a maintenance man was driving a  floor polisher which is so large he was seated on it.  It reminded me of a large tractor or a zamboni.  He must have driven the thing past my father's room six times.  What zeal!  Or maybe it was just fun to ride the thing.

My father's chair was in the reclining position, and the platform underneath was crusted with dust.  We called attention to this to his nurse, and she said that was not "our first priority" right now.  This was richly ironic, since my father was there in the first place because he had had a pacemaker inserted in this very hospital and received a blood infection from the procedure.  If they had been a little more obsessed with cleanliness, my dad would be home right now, watching a ball game and drinking a martini.