Category — Health

Check out the pollen piling up in drifts in my office parking lot yesterday. My eyes are getting puffy and gritty just looking at it. Allergy medicine, anyone?

Technorati Tags: pollen, gritty eyes, allergies

I know you’ll be glad to find out this is the last of my hospital-inspired navel gazing. :oP

Hospital Survival Tips

Here are my tips that will help you get through your next hospital stay … a stay that I hope you never need.

• Send any jewelry home with relatives the first day. I had a too-fast drip in my left arm, and my swelling was so bad that I almost had them cut my rings off. Bonus: Sending valuables home means you don’t have to worry about theft or jewelry getting in the way of equipment or tests.

• For god’s sake, stay in the hospital gown. If you throw up or leak other bodily fluids on it, someone else will be doing the laundry. Just get a robe or a small lap blanket to cover you up if you’re worried about how you look.

• Avoid small requests like ice and water or a new blanket right before or during hospital shift changes. The staff will be too busy to help with the minor stuff, and you will feel like a nag if you eventually buzz them back to ask again.

• Try to throw your trash in the can. If you miss (and you will), get a family visitor to pick up the stray tissues periodically. It will save you from wanting to swat the cleaning lady who chides you during her desultory daily visits.

• You won’t come to the hospital with them, but as soon as possible, get a few toiletries delivered by a friend or family member. The hospital will provide some things. Mine, for example, was nice enough to fork over some socks, lotion, toothpaste, and a toothbrush, among other small homey touches. But you’ll still want a hairbrush, clean underwear, and shampoo. You feel better when you’re clean.

• Get a notepad and a couple of pens (you’ll lose at least one). It helps if you write down:

  • your wish list so you’ll know what you need if hubby or anyone else asks, “Can I bring you anything?”
  • reminders of what you need to do when you’re well again, so you can quit worrying about them right now — because now you have a list and a plan
  • things the doctors tell you so you’ll recall the details later
  • a prioritized list of things you want to ask the doctor when he/she visits so you use your doc’s time efficiently

• Bring a few dollar bills. If your doctor permits it, you may want a few sodas or cheese crackers from the machines.

• If you normally take medicines at home, keep your medicine list with you at all times in your daily life because it will save you a delay in getting your regular meds while you’re hospitalized. Be sure to include brand and generic names, dosages, and frequency of taking the medicines. I keep mine in my BlackBerry because I take several medicines for chronic issues. Those medical types — they always want to know the details.

• Ladies, keep up with your periods. Isn’t it annoying how the doc ALWAYS wants to know when you last spotted (ha-ha) Aunt Flo? But if you keep a note of when your period was each month (as I do, under “cycles” in my BlackBerry), you can find the info at a glance. I figure at my age I’ve had nearly 400 periods, so the details of any one cycle aren’t too distinct in my memory.

• Be thankful. The hospital staff really will go out of their way for patients who try to use their time wisely, state problems clearly, and are appreciative of small comforts and courtesies. I was flabbergasted and touched that one of my nurses trotted through the wards on three floors to find me a soda one night when I couldn’t sleep, felt miserable, and had a thundering headache after getting a breathing treatment with Albuterol earlier in the day. All I wanted in this big old world was an ice-cold can of Coke, and she found it for me. She noticed that I drank every drop, and she smiled when I thanked her profusely. Even professionals are pleased when their efforts are appreciated. And all jokes aside about U.S. medical care, I appreciated the cool, clean sheets and someone who came when I rang a button in the middle of night.

Advice for Hospitals

I also have a couple of suggestions for hospitals to help them improve.

• Tell your staff to wear no cologne or at least go easy on it. A person who’s fighting nausea, a ticklish cough, and respiratory ailments doesn’t want to be impressed by your scented magnificence.

• Don’t comment on what a good appetite fat patients have. Especially if the patient is only taking 1-2 bites of each food and is ordering a variety in hopes that something on her tray won’t make her want to hurl even more violently. And especially if you’re the skinny cleaning lady who, I might bitchily add, has no eyebrows but the ones Revlon gave her but who does have some startling tortoiseshell and chrome Jackie O. glasses. (Er … not that I have anyone specific in mind.)

What Do You Think?

What’s your advice for hospital patients or hospital personnel?

Technorati Tags: hospital advice, hospital survival tips, advice to hospitals

My inner blogger just could not quit taking notes during my recent illness and hospital stay. The people and facts duly noted include:

• The nurse’s aide who wore so much Axe cologne I began to wonder if it could double as anesthetic. It enveloped me, burning my nose all the way to the CAT scan room. I tried mouth-breathing, but then I swear I could taste the stuff in the air. That was worse.

• The way a properly prepared TB skin test looks — a very small disturbance of the skin surrounded by a black Sharpie marker’s circle and big ol’ scribbled letters. Looks like the nurses tagged me with a little hospital graffiti. (Negative on the test results, by the way.)

• A rueful look at my own errors. Before one discovers one is sick enough to go to the hospital and is still experimenting with over-the-counter care, it’s now duly noted that genuine abdominal illness should not be confused with extreme gas pains and treated with Gax-X and a series of butt-up gymnastic positions and writhing in bed at home to encourage the painful poot to escape. Apparently, I was trying to fart out an ovary.

Technorati Tags: hospital observations, gas pains, TB skin test, too much cologne