Musings from the Ozone

The meaning of hospitable is;  'treating visitors well, friendly, welcoming and generous to guests or strangers.'  Another meaning says;  'agreeable; pleasant  and providing what someone needs to live comfortably.'  Hmmmm.. I'm not sure if the word 'hospital' comes from 'hospitable,' but I would like to see some connection!

This saga started with my husband having surgery this past month.  Once again, I was able to learn what a hospital is all about.  Oh, perhaps I should just use meaning of 'hospital.'   One meaning says it a place where something is repaired!   Hmmm again. At any rate, it is supposed to be a healing place, and to be hospitable, one must incorporate a bit of pleasantness in the mix!

Before I really get to the heart of my writing here, let me tell you that this was my husband's third back surgery since 2007.  He has had an operation every other year since 2007 and each one was in the month of March.  Not sure how that happened, but we certainly hope that there will be no more March back surgeries!  Surgeries aside, there have been so many emotions aroused regarding the hospital in general, until one really does question the word, 'hospital' or 'hospitable.'   Should we judge the whole hospital by our impression of the place?  Well, probably not, but many people have come to hate the place for many reasons.  We are familiar with the idea of a nurse waking a person up to give them a sleeping pill. We have heard horror stories of operations going wrong; operating on the wrong leg, or leaving a sponge in the patient.  Gruesome though that may be, that will not be the normal case in a hospital.  There will be many more subtleties of experiences  that you will remember, should you ever be a patient in the hospital.  You will remember the noise level in the hospital.  You will remember the good nurses or the nasty nurses who cared for you.  You will remember the lack of privacy, or perhaps the loneliness.  You will remember the food and the pain you went through.  Each hospital visit is a different experience; but there are some things that hospitals have in common and they can influence your opinions of hospitals forever!

My husband was scheduled for an early morning operation.  What has happened to the days when a patient who would be scheduled for surgery at 7:30 AM, could go in the night before, be prepared and prepped at night and then was able to sleep?  Nowadays, one has to be at the hospital at 6 AM, go through strenuous questioning and preparation, pushed off to surgery, very  tired and exhausted from lack of sleep.  If a person has a long drive to get to the hospital, he had to get up at 4 or 4:30 AM, just to be at the hospital at 6 AM! 

Now, we had to meet the nurse who welcomed my husband at that awful early morning hour, and she set the tone for how he felt before going under the knife in a just a couple of hours.  Suffice it to say that, such a  nurse carries a great deal of weight and can prove almost detrimental to your emotional health,  should she be cranky from lack of sleep herself or ready to just push you through an assembly line of mechanical treatment in order to get you out of the way; done and over with!  While the nurse that met my husband and I was not exactly cranky, she was extremely mechanical and seemingly void of feeling. Her general behavior was one of impatience and callousness. 

Earlier,  another nurse had  told my husband  to bring all his medications in a little  bag so there would be no error as to the dosage, etc.  This nurse  began to ask him questions, and then scolded him for not writing down all his medicines, rather than bringing them in a little plastic bag.    My husband looked at me and rolled his eyes.  She then noticed a statement on my husband's chart that said he was allergic to Penicillin.  He told her he was not allergic to it at all, and didn't know how that happened to be on the chart.  She said, "well, you must have told someone at some time, or it wouldn't have been on your chart!"   In her eyes, there was no possibility that someone got it wrong; it had to be my husband that told someone he was allergic to Penicillin.  He said he never told anyone that?  She kept insisting that he must have told someone that he was allergic, or it wouldn't have been on the chart!

 I was very thankful that I was there in the room and could also speak for my husband.  Here was a man suffering from 2 herniated disks,  bones pushing up against his sciatic nerve, and then this mechanical woman robot would argue with him that he was either allergic to Penicillin or not allergic?  I asserted that he did not have an allergy; I did not know how the mix-up happened, but if he was given Penicillin he would be okay.  Nothing doing; she said he had to wear an allergy bracelet.  We let her win that one.  The feeling that goes with someone who is abrupt and sharp with you at 6 AM in the morning, aggravated over some mix-up that took away her control of the situation, left an ugly impression.  Of course, she was used to the routine and forgot that there was a real, live person with her.  A computer might have done a better job, or at least have equaled her in the coldness that  she  projected.   She continued her mechanical questioning, and a short while, I got the feeling that she wished I would leave.  There was an unspoken boredom in her demeanor; how tiring it was to get someone's chart ready.  My husband was only a number to her, but to me, he was real live flesh and blood and I happened to love him.  We didn't appreciate her patronizing attitude, but had no choice except to observe her actions and comply with the interrogation. I decided to just go to the waiting room, and not let the nurse distress me any longer. 

 My kind husband handled things better than I did.  He was also going to be 'out' in an hour.  I was going to have to sit in a waiting room for perhaps 4 or 5 hours, worrying that something might go wrong.  I was tired too; I had gotten up at 4 AM to help my husband get around and then drive him up to the far away hospital.  Moving to the waiting room, I was seated in one of the little cubbyholes of the waiting room, when suddenly another lady came in, griping out loud to me about the same nurse who had just processed my husband with so little patience or professionalism.  I hadn't said anything verbally; even if I had felt put off by the nurse,  I feel it is better to just let public behavior of some people slide by.  Why be constantly offended by events you cannot change or effect?  She hadn't personally attacked me; she had just manifested rather ugly 'hospitality!'  The lady who had just entered the room was not taking the event lightly.  For anyone who would listen, she belly-ached about the bad behavior of the nurse, and remarked how 'unprofessional' the woman was.  I guess I would have to agree with her, but I did not feel like entering into a discussion about it.  Sometimes, discussions only serve to rehearse your aggravations and make you feel like they just happened again!  I am feeling that even as I write this!

I was sleepy.  Another lady entered the waiting room, but this lady seemed like an angel in disguise.  She was the waiting room receptionist, and there was a night and day difference in her demeanor from the nurse who admitted my husband in the surgical unit.   This lady welcomed us kindly, she offered us coffee, and told us she would give us an updated report as soon as she received word about operations in progress.  She explained the computer board to us, and how we could know where our mates were at each point in the surgery.  I then realized that my husband was not in surgery at all, even though it was almost an hour after the scheduled time.  He was in the 'holding' room!  Finally, the chart showed he went into surgery an hour after the schedule.  Time was going to groan by slowly, but with a warm hospitable environment like this, we would all relax and be okay.

The waiting room was not one big room at all.  Rather, it was a series of little rooms, all in a line, like a train.  Each little section of rooms had the chairs arranged in such a way that one could watch a TV on the wall.  Imagine a long wall, with 3 or 4 TV's blaring all the way down the hall!  They were blaring too!  At the end of the hall, there was a larger section outfitted with 2 computers, vending machines, a sink and coffee pots with assorted crackers beside it.  The best thing about the back room was that it was empty!  I was so sleepy and just decided to curl up in the straight chair, as much as that was possible, and go to sleep!  I did, and awoke to the fact that I had slept an hour!  How nice, I thought.  I wish it could have been 2 hours, but that hour sure did me a lot of good.  I drank some coffee, and was so glad I brought my laptop with me.  Being able to at least read e-mail and do some computer work made the time pass faster.  A few more people had joined my room, and actually, it was very pleasant company!  I listened, as one woman, poured out stories of  her husband's many surgeries, and she also had been through several operations.  If you ever feel sorry for yourself, it is very good to hear someone who has had it twice as hard as yourself.  The woman did not complain, she just regaled me with tales of some heavy surgeries, and was almost laughing and telling funny stories about them!  It is amazing how some people can turn nightmare situations into comedies; simply with light-hearted joking and uplifting  attitudes. 

Along came the lovely receptionist…..giving us our updates.   It was more than 3 hours now after my husband's surgery.  She told me that the doctor would be coming in soon and give me the report of the surgery.  I thought the receptionist was just being especially kind to me, but when I saw her exceptionally warm attitude with everyone, I realized she was just a very sweet and kind person to all of us!  She took  fear and anxiety away from us, simply by being kind and  understanding.  Empathy is an amazing trait and it is something one would like to see  all the  hospital employees possess.

 If I didn't pick up anything of significance from this hospital experience ,  I became greatly aware of how one person can color your perception of an experience ,  either for good or for bad!  On one hand, a nurse, who should have been trained to calm a patient's fears, apprehensions, anxieties, etc., had been oblivious to her patients feelings.  She had chosen to be mechanical, unfeeling, void of emotion and empathy.  In contrast however,  another employee (the receptionist) gave out an aura of hope, caring, empathy and understanding to all  the patients families in the waiting room, making it an atmosphere of pleasantness and peace.   I wonder if I will ever achieve a consistent and engrained habit  of  recognizing  that my attitude has consequences; many consequences of which I may never know.  I am always amazed when I hear that someone was comforted by my words or actions;  I wasn't even aware that  I was succeeding in comforting!  It makes you aware again that people always take away opinions about us.  Even in a place as huge as a hospital, a place where you will meet lots of new people, it would be hard to have a feeling about the whole hospital without remembering certain individuals in the place who either turned you 'on' or 'off!'  It is just amazing that our whole opinion of a hospital could actually hinge on the treatment from one or two individuals!