We just received the happy news that Jana is free to go after her little encounter with her friends the drug-resistant bacteria and modern medicine’s to beat them back. While I could kiss Jana’s doctors and Sir Alexander Fleming on his mouldering lips (if I got infected, there’s always anti-biotics!), there are certainly happier places to spend three days and two nights away from it all.
Jana, at the beginning of her confinement.
In the hospital, every attempt is made to disorient you. You are encouraged to strip yourself of all possessions. You give up your watch for safekeeping. No clocks are in sight. Fortunately, you have a window, and you can tell by the light growing in the faintly orange sky that the long night is about over.
A room with a view.
Also, you are surrounded by (or worse yet, all but strapped to) strange contraptions covered with cryptic symbols. The kids and I passed the time trying to understand the following:
- In the middle: “Place body through rollers until head pops off.”
- Upper right: Different rack options?
- Bottom far left: “Break kneecaps with heavy weight.” Not sure what the saw is for.
- Bottom middle left: “Knock head off with heavy weight.” And there’s that saw again.
- Bottom middle right: “Flatten body with heavy weight.” I guess they want to save the head.
- I don’t even want to know what the “foot extend” and “foot retract” mechanisms are for.
- Apparently they call in a muppet with one glowing eye to “relieve pressure.”
- If the rollers, the heavy weight, and the saw aren’t sufficient to decapitate the victim, a mini-UFO with a tractor beam can be called in to finish the job.
- They even try to throw off your moral and cultural anchors.
- No opportunity to disorient you is lost, however tiny and subliminal. Also: Jana, at the end of her confinement.
While my descriptions here are written with tongue pressed against cheek, there is a serious side to all this: hospitals can be destabilizing and dehumanizing places. Jana was stripped of all but a handful of her possessions. Jana refused to wear hers, but typically you are given a flimsy gown that makes you feel naked in front of the uniformed authority figures. I listened to people describe their bowel movements in detail. One person was told that they had a stone in their bladder that was over two and half inches across. Another was handed a clinical death sentence of advanced, metastasized cancer of their internal organs.
You’re stripped of all sense of time. If your neighbor’s loud TVs, visitors, or screams don’t deprive you of sleep, the practice of checking your vitals every two hours does the job. Or it’s the needle stuck in your arm.
So, thank you, you lovely doctors and nurses and aides and custodians and cafeteria workers of the UCI Medical Center. But don’t be offended if we say that we don’t intend to stop by again for as long as we can help it.
9 responses so far ↓
1 Kaimi // May 2, 2008 at 3:28 pm
“Jana refused to wear hers, but typically you are given a flimsy gown . . .”
She refused it? Awesome. “Nurse, please send up 5 cc’s of penicillin for the naked patient in Room 107 . . .”
In all seriousness, I’m glad to hear that Jana survived the headhunting UFOs and large weights being dropped on her. And I hope she continues in her recovery; it will put a little crimp in our plans to take over the world, if she gets knocked out of action by annoying little bacteria.
Watch out for infections and stuff. Did you see this CNN article? http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/05/01/ep.avoiding.infection/ . Seriously scary stuff, man.
As a (post)hospital book for her, I recommend Lonesome Dove. It has a leg-infection scene that plays a pivotal role in the plot. Maybe a little too pivotal.
2 EmilyCC // May 2, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Thanks for the update, John! I got worried when I checked Jana’s site that casually mentioned a trip to the hospital.
Hope you all have a relaxing weekend to recover
3 JoeR // May 3, 2008 at 4:17 am
I’m glad everyone is all right.
I’m also glad to see that American torture methods have advanced so far from just the primitive bed-rash-plastic sheets that I was subjected to on my “rack”. I had no option for muppets or UFOs.
4 Jana // May 3, 2008 at 9:08 am
When I was in the ER for abt 4-5 hrs waiting to be admitted to a room, they stationed us on a met right in front of the only bathroom serving 25 ER patients and their caregivers. Ok, so I saw (and heard) all manner of monstrous things going on in that 1-seater bathroom. And you can just guess that I was totally and completely unwilling to use it even though nature was calling.
Fortunately, after abt 3 hours they had to get someone in to clean it up (such a nightmare) and I was the first one in afterwards…
It was obvious that few of the ppl using the bathroom were washing their hands after they went (most were far too ill or already had hands hooked up to IVs and such). Some ppl were in there 6-10 times/hr throwing up or worse. Later, when we were getting admitted to the hospital, John mentioned to the docs how hard it was to be stationed right there and they told us that they’d actually put us in one of the more desirable spots because we had a corner with 3 walls with a curtain for privacy. It was only then that we realized that others didn’t even have that much of a recluse from the madness.
I coped by curling up into fetal position on the bed and just breathing. In and out and in again. I also hummed quietly to drown out some of the screaming and craziness from the other side of that curtain.
5 xJane // May 3, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Hospitals are hideous places. I try to avoid them at all costs. Why is it that the place where you’re supposed to get better is so filled with things that’ll make you worse (like Kosher applewood smoked bacon club sandwiches). I’m glad for the whole clan that the ordeal is over & hope that you don’t have the need to go back (because then…well, you’d be back). I don’t recall Germany’s hospitals being much better, I think it’s a universal truth. (Altho, I’d sell my soul to get into Princeton-Plainsboro teaching hospital.)
6 Rich // May 3, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Bacteria can be really nasty - nearly took my nephew’s life. Very glad Jana’s better!
7 Elaine // May 4, 2008 at 8:59 am
I also hate the things one sees and hears in emergency rooms, Jana. But, I’m glad you’re doing better.
What the discharge doctor said when my mother was getting out of the hospital to go to rehab after her hip replacement surgery a few years back sums up hospitals for me. He told me: “I want to get her out of here before she catches something.”
Also, what one of the doctors in the emergency room told me when my mother was there when she had pneumonia a couple of years ago. He told me: “If you don’t have anything now, you will have in a few days after being around here.” And he was right. Just as she was getting discharged a couple of days later, I was coming down with the creeping crud from hell.
8 Jana // May 6, 2008 at 9:16 pm
oh, and BTW Kaimi, they let me keep wearing my own clothes since my injury was on my lower leg which wasn’t hampered in the least by my wearing crops and a tee rather than a flimsy gown.
Perhaps the weirdest part of all that was that there was no working shower for our room so my only option for keeping clean was a daily sponge bath on my bed behind my curtain. Well one day I was “bathing” as there was a group of about 10 ppl on the other side of that curtain having a pretty intense conversation. They were like 2 feet away from my nekkidness and even tho they couldn’t see me, it was awfully hard to bathe under those circumstances…
9 Quin // May 8, 2008 at 12:38 pm
You are a good man and I’m glad Jana has you! Those pictures are creepy . . . and sadly reminiscent of a scene in “Idiocracy” . . .
Leave a Comment