hospital visit.

A guest post by John W.

Last week I toured my first South Asian hospital. It’s a nice hospital, and it’s probably not representative of the majority of hospitals.  This tour happened because my friend, David, had surgery. I met him at the hospital to help. While there, we had many interesting adventures.

We waited and prepared for the surgery in the ER. We had to wait for a bed like any ER. The difference being that even when you’re assigned a bed, a family accompanied by a doctor can walk in the door and plop down on your bed. This circumstance makes it no longer your bed.

While waiting, I think that it’s policy for everyone in the institution to parade through your room without knocking, thumb through your chart, and depart without an introduction or explanation for the visit.  At the same time, they surprised me with up-to-date/best practices to prepare for the surgery safely.

After surgery, we rolled up into a 8 person room.  The room lacked luxuries, but it turned out adequate.  To raise/lower the head of the bed, I had to search for which 2 of the 8 beds now had the hand crank.  For IV medication, the nurses titrated the rate manually instead of using pumps.

The guest chairs turned out to be plastic porch chairs instead of a recliner.  So, after an hour trying to sleep in this chair, I succumbed and joined the other guests sleeping on the floor.  It took a while to fall asleep with all of the bodily noises emanating out of each room.  Luckily, we’d packed earplugs.

At any time, someone would peek through the curtain – staff, patients, patients’ family members, miscellaneous other strangers.  To obtain various needs, I had to learn new lingo.  For example, asking for a “urinal” met with many blank stares.  I almost resulted to charades to communicate the request.  In the end, I thought better of it.  I discovered that it’s called a “urine can.”

I have plenty more stories, but I’ll stop.  I’m glad that I could share these adventures with my friend.  I’m glad that his surgery went well.  All of these adventures left me really missing the hospital.  What a strange environment/work place to love and miss.  It definitely takes a long time to feel comfortable/proficient at a new job.  Who knows.  Maybe we’ll volunteer at a hospital again.

Sleeping on the floor and first in line