8 Things That Made My Hospital Stay Extremely Uncomfortable
I recently had occasion to spend several days in the hospital, because I enjoy being surrounded by the infirm and men in loose pants. From waking on my porch to paramedics asking me silly questions like, "What's your name?" while I attempted to stop a ladybug from crawling into my mouth all the way to the discharge at the hands and groin of Dr. Cameltoe, it was an adventure. Along the way, there were special levels and layers of lunacy that unnecessary alliteration just can't clearly elucidate. So, for your edification, here's a rundown of everything that made my past hospital visit kind of unnerving.
No Guests
I've never actually been in an ambulance before, so the prospect was a little exciting. Would I be allowed to run the siren? Would people who weren't fast enough be run off the road and denied any further healthcare due to their overwhelming ignorance? Oh, the fun I'd have if I lived!
Unfortunately, you can do none of those things in an ambulance. And, realistically, that's fine. I didn't really think I would be allowed to vehicularly homicide the slow-moving. However, I thought I could at least bring a friend. I've seen plenty of movies in which a loved one joins you on the ambulance trip to the hospital. Well, fat chance of that anymore, thanks to dicks. Dicks ruined it.
As the paramedic explained to me, because of an overwhelming number of incidents in which the concerned loved one switched focus from their dying companion to robbing the ambulance, guests are no longer allowed. What kind of scum pig is in the ambulance with a person they care for enough to actually go to the hospital with them but then stops and thinks, "I need to steal some saline solution and that paramedic's cellphone"? It was a sad way to start the journey.
Doc On Wikipedia
The emergency room I was in was basically a semi-circle around a nurse's station. It was labeled Pod A. I saw Pods B and C, but I don't know how far the alphabet goes. It doesn't matter. There were about nine beds in the pod, with just curtains separating them, but it seemed pretty well organized. Except for when peering out of the curtained sector I inhabited I discovered a doctor at a computer terminal using Wikipedia. And it wasn't just break-time reading; he was reading up on doctor shit.
I get if you need refreshers now and then -- I look up shit I'm supposed to know all the time -- but I don't do it in front of everyone, especially people who are expecting me to know that info already. This guy was reading the Wikipedia page on sciatica and then later the page on urinary tract infections. Dude, don't do that. Don't read those things. Know those things. Know everything about them, or at the very least Google it on your phone so I can't tell I'm being treated by Dr. Wiki who got his medical degree from a line of dialogue he remembered from House and used it to make an edit about antibiotic resistances at 3 a.m.
The Philosophical Drunk
Obviously, in an ER you can't pick your neighbors unless you're, you know, wealthy. The rest of us get plopped down next to a guy screaming because he somehow swallowed a decorative ninja star and it's working its way out the backdoor slowly but surely.
My neighbor on this visit was a man who was brought in because of severe chest pains after being completely wasted in public. I learned this because he also suffered from acute loss of indoor voice and was able to speak only in yells suitable for backyard barbecues and rodeos. This was also how I learned he was referred to a psychiatrist because he'd been wanting to hurt himself after his ex left him. He never learned to cope, you see. People grow up, but he never really did. He kept drinking away his problems and, instead of embracing each new day's sunrise, he hid it behind a tequila sunrise. He said this out loud. Wistfully. Earnestly. I wanted to start drinking too.
For four hours the saddest drunk you ever heard lamented all the ways he'd done people wrong in what could have made for the best/worst country music song ever, or some killer grade nine poetry. I captured a few nuggets on my phone, such as, "When you've been raised to do wrong, how do you even recognize right when you see it?" And, "I was so numb I couldn't even sense the pain I was causing in others." And finally, "I felt like a blind man struggling in the dark," to which the hospital-appointed counselor explained to him that blind people have no additional troubles in the dark.
Emergency Drainage
Speaking of neighbors, on my other side was a lovely Hispanic lady who was 90 years old and dressed in clothes that probably cost as much as my car. She had a cyst in her ass that they drained about four feet from my bed, behind the relatively unsecure protection of a thin curtain that is in no way odor-proof.
I don't know what causes large, pus-filled ass pockets to form in a person. I don't need to know. What I do know is that when a doctor drains such a thing, it smells an awful lot like when the vet has to drain your dog's anal gland, which, as I understand it, is basically just an internal bag of shit potpourri. Your dog's shit just isn't shitty enough, so it needs to run under this stank dispenser to make sure that, once it's been birthed unto the world, everyone's eyes water. Imagine that, but instead of a dog, it's an elderly lady who's crying in Spanish.
Tiny Scrubs
I don't know a lot about hospital scrubs. Was there a time when all healthcare professionals agreed on them? Or was it more of an informal evolution that spread across the globe? Probably the latter, just in the way blue jeans and a T-shirt are kind of the unofficial uniform of a dude who has nothing to do and a suit and tie indicates maybe you can be trusted with money or children.
Whatever the history of scrubs, one thing I do know is that there are whole companies that manufacture nothing but scrubs. They're abundant and should be relatively easy for a doctor to obtain. Doctors can buy BMWs and shit; of course they can buy thin linen pants that fit, right? Never make assumptions.
This man wasn't the first doctor I saw, nor was he the last, but he was notable for having a full-on front wedgie that looked like it was tight enough to make his close relatives walk uncomfortably. It was pretty much the biggest moose knuckle I'd seen not on an actual moose in my life. This guy had some serious testicles.
Later on, after he'd gone about his business, I asked my nurse if I should say something next time he came in the room if the same thing was happening, and she assured me this was not a special occasion. The nurses literally call him Dr. Mooseknuckle behind his back and have done so for ages because he always wears his tiny scrubs hiked up so high that it jams his ballsack upward and outward for all to view.
Hannibal
Once we left the ER, it was on to a semi-private room on the sixth floor. The next bed over was occupied by an elderly lady who also didn't have an indoor voice, a common theme in this hospital. More disconcerting was that she looked exactly like George Peppard, the genius who played Hannibal in The A-Team. Not a little bit like Hannibal -- exactly like Hannibal.
When I asked a nurse if it would be weird if I took a picture of the lady because of her resemblance to Hannibal, I was assured that yes, it was very weird and no, I could not. Please take my word that she looked just like George Peppard. It was uncanny.
Naturally, this isn't going to be a universal experience and your next stay at the hospital will probably be George Peppard-free, but if you could do me a favor, please be on the lookout for the other members of the A-team. We could be on to something.
Flirting Of The Damned
I'm not so good at flirting in person because I'm just like the me from online, only you can see me. It's a real drawback to my game. That said, I'm most amenable to friendly banter with just about anyone within a reasonable set of circumstances. And you may be surprised to learn that the narrow set of circumstances and the small number of people who fall outside "just about anyone" can all be found together in oozing, contagious bundles at the hospital.
After Hannibal was sent home, a new guest arrived in my room, a lady best described as Blanche Devereaux's less attractive, less healthy, less well-fed, more Walking Dead sister. And she had a gray tooth. You know the kind I mean; there's a whole episode of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia about it. Like a coffin nail in a person's head, it is -- just a snarly, stanky rot plug oozing creepiness and the distinct odor of mouth-butt. Within about a half hour I had learned she was in the hospital because of a kidney infection, she'd been divorced for just over 10 years, and she liked a man who was good with his hands, which she said with an '80s sitcom-style wink and throaty laugh, indicating, perhaps, she wanted me to finger her.
Maybe living-dead-Blanche is really a great lady most days, but in a hospital you really should dial down your crotch's motor and put things in neutral, just for the sake of not picking up secondary infections.
The Wanderer
After moving to another room, this one fully private (at least in theory), I was introduced to my next-door neighbor. Not that you generally meet your neighbors in the hospital, but Jerry, a semi-lucid man in his 70s, had a habit of wandering wherever and saying whatever, and the nursing staff weren't big on keeping him wrangled 24/7.
Jerry wasn't a bad guy; he was a load of laughs, actually, but he suffered a weird kind of asshole lycanthropy whereby, once the sun went down, he didn't turn into a werewolf so much as an unpredictable douche. You just couldn't tell if he'd answer a hello with a friendly, "Hi," or a more colorful, "Up yours, shithead." It seemed like he had a habit of quickly forgetting his rudeness as well and would return to pleasant, friendly Jerry just as quickly as he'd gone Mr. Hyde on you.
It was my first night in the room, around 3 a.m., when the hallway door opened. A faint shuffling sound woke me up. Shuffle shuffle shuffle. I raised my head, peering into the darkness. If it was a nurse, surely they would have turned on a light and entered swiftly; they're pretty busy people. It came again -- shuffle shuffle shuffle. I froze, confused and terrified. And then the unmistakable sound of piss hitting a toilet filled my ears. I was being victimized by a night pisser.
Moments later, I heard the sound of Jerry muttering what I believe was, "Wherezat fuckin' toilet hole?" and then shuffling back out of the room preceding my calling in a nurse to make sure I wasn't about to be raped by an elderly man with dementia. As it happened, the nurses were aware of Jerry's penchant for wandering but were OK with it because, aside from the odd bout of foul language, he was pretty much harmless to everyone and was easily bribed with ice cream. We were a lot alike.
Other than all that, my hospital stay was fairly normal.
Your body is a medical training tool. See why in 5 Terrifying Secrets Of Hospital Emergency Rooms and hope to God some intern didn't mess up. If they did, you could be waking up during surgery as seen in The 6 Most Horrifying Ways Hospitals Can Kill You.
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