Category: Experiences
A hospital diary
Posted by Alina on May 29, 2009
It’s Wednesday. My third day in hospital. On Monday I had a breast operation. The doctor took out a lump that – he said – was as big as a ping-pong ball. By all accounts it’s a benign tumor, but the final results will come in two weeks.
It’s horrible being in hospital. It’s not to do with how the place looks – it’s been renovated. There are sinks in each small room, hot water coming from the tap, clean albeit worn sheets, the blue lino is obsessively washed starting from 6.30 in the morning, and the nurses supply patients with medicine, contradicting a common perception that in Romanian hospitals patients have to bring their own medicine and sometimes even buy the special thread for stitches. It is not the case. It is not to do either with I don’t really mind the small yard filled with people smoking and throwing plastic coffee cups everywhere, although there are about 8 bins right in the centre of them.
No, what I find horrible is the sense I get that one doesn’t really count when stepping into a hospital. You are just a case, you are no longer Corina, the IT programmer, the single mother, and you become Corina the
fibrosis 40 year-old.
To me, the hospital is also like a processing farm: come in, get into pyjamas, go for a check up in front of about 15 doctors who stare at you half naked with the curiosity of a mechanic changing a punctured tyre, seeing only the problem, never wondering who you are, what you do, what you feel, coming up with a solution between them, which they communicate to you too. You pick up your bra, turn round to put it on, wondering why you bother considering that 10 male doctors have already seen your breasts.
Afterward the check ups, I was moved from ward to ward, until finally somebody took me to the operation area, the room where people are prepared for surgery and where I was also to be returned later and kept under observation, with a drip in my arm, until the next morning.
In the ward, I find there is an elderly lady, suffering from cancer, already bald after treatment, who lectures me about contraception, believing I was there to have an abortion. She complains about being fed only yogurt and bananas. She wants grilled sausages. The nurse – the only warm one I came across – is very patient with her. In the next bed there is a Roma looking lady, overweight, displaying huge golden earrings that pull her lobes down, complaining that she was a diabetic and could not stand she’s been hungry ever since was diagnosed as a diabetic, but she can’t stand not eating, as the anesthetist advised.
After the operation, as I was hovering between sleep and awareness, dizzy from the anesthetic, wanting to sink into my bed and disappear, I kept hearing the old lady talking, prodding us all with questions. It tormented me. She spoke extensively about her daughter who works for an air travel company, about her husband who for six months has been in charge of cooking, ironing and caring for her (“we’ve been married for 50 years and I never knew he could cookâ€, she says). When Rupert came to see me and bent down for a peck on my dried lips she muttered “Is that it? Can’t you see how beautiful she is?â€, leaving me with a big lump in my throat. Innocent enough words get shrouded in different meaning in a hospital bed.
The evening was horrendous. The kind nurse told me I must have a pee. She placed a pot on a chair next to the bed and said I must try. She then turned the tap on, for inspiration. As I was sitting there awkwardly, wishing they would allow me to go to the loo instead, the family of the old lady burst in (her daughter, husband and grandson) and I remained on the pot, covering myself and wondering how long my predicament will last. They spoke about food. She said she wanted to go home, she would love some tortellini but was sorry she ate the sausages that the family had brought (at her request) earlier in the day, because now she can’t shit. The nurses came, saw I was in a terrible position, kicked out the two men and I took the opportunity to go back to bed, trying to sleep. But I couldn’t.
After the daughter left, the old lady fretted over her pot, chatting and complaining continuously — “Oh, my God! Luminita, my girl” (Luminita was one of the nurses) “where are you? Oh, nobody’s coming. They all went to dinner. Nobody cares.” She then asked a visitor who had come to see the Roma-looking lady, “Could you please bring me a bottle of warm water and help me wash my bum?â€
The nurses have a terrible time with the Roma looking lady because it turned out that, in spite of being told not to eat or drink before surgery, she drank some coffee and after the operation she puked like hell. The nurses also struggled to keep her in bed, as she is a mountain of flesh. She kept talking about her fibrosis – which was apparently as big as a baby’s head – as if it were her child. She asked if she could take it home, which the nurses found rather sick and told her off about it.
While the woman on the pot kept summoning God and complaining about the nurses, the fat woman gave an occasional cry of “Mamaaaaâ€, with a wailing “a†at the end. And then the fat woman called her husband and a wave of obscenities poured out of her mouth. The only thing I understood was that her husband was accused of having no interest in her and talking on the phone to his whores. In spite of the obscene words, this told me she was very hurt and I felt sorry for her.
In between the two of them I started to feel rather ill. I felt I could barely keep myself together. If I let myself slip just an inch I would also start wailing, and then the ward would become a complete circus. I so wanted to go to sleep and not think about anything.
The new shift of nurses came. Blonde, sexy and warm Laura was changed by sour, skinny Mariana, who although polite emanated coldness through all her pores. She was almost like a prison camp guard: stiff, doing her job as efficiently as she could, with no trace of sympathy. But I was deeply grateful to her for ignoring the nonsense about the pot and letting me go to the toilet. Such a relief.
Later on, I managed to doze off and decided I didn’t care if the ward burns down, let alone about the two ladies who were there with me. I don’t have a very clear idea about what happened, although I have a few sequences in my head. At the back of my mind I could still hear the elderly lady calling the nurses to help with the potty. I also remember that a nurse came to wash the lino around the lady’s bed and in the morning the lady felt very bad about what had happened during the night and kept apologizing. There are only flash-like sequences in my head about what had happened. I don’t really know for sure, but I believe the lady’s problem with the potty was that it turned over and spilled all over the floor. Hence the washing of the lino.
The doctor came to see me in the morning and said I could be moved out of the “re-animation†section, to another ward. With no drip on, I managed to slowly go outside; I felt the sun, the air, and I appreciated them more than I have ever before. I longed to go home.
There were other patients in the new ward, with different sets of problems and issues to be discussed. I realized it was good therapy for people in hospital, the therapy where people ask you what your problem is, then they come with ideas, solutions, personal experiences and encouragement. It makes you feel slightly better. You kind of get back into form, stop feeling you are a car coming out of the repair shop. And you can get over the nurses’ coldness and lack of interest because you realise there are others who do care, even if it’s only for a few hours. This is so humane, so worthy, especially when it comes from unknown people, who have no idea who you are either, what baggage you carry. But they care for you, as one human to another. This was the positive side I found in hospital: the humanity I found in fellow patients.
Wednesday morning came rather abruptly, with a grumpy nurse, big as a Russian tank, bursting in at 6am, turning on all the lights, and giving us each a thermometer. She returned 10 minutes later, gathered the thermometers, without saying a word, and left slamming the door. I would have loved to sleep a bit more. But it was not possible, really, since at 6.30 somebody entered furiously, to collect the rubbish. And then she came back to wash the floor. I wondered how these people function. I know it’s just a job, I know it takes a toll on them to be faced everyday with human suffering. But how can you behave like this, not thinking about the others, not caring whether the people who came out of the operation need more sleep or a nice word. Why bring the bloody thermometer at 6 am and not 7 am? What difference does an hour make to them and their thermometers and their rubbish and blue lino? Is it some kind of revenge they take on people, for having to work nights and put up with some patients who make their life difficult? What is it that transforms people into insensitive beings?
Now, as I am at home, I still wonder about this. Is it selfishness? Is it just a protective screen for them? I don’t really know, but I feel so bad discovering this side in people – the uncaring side. It’s like lifting the corner of a curtain to discover there is monster in hiding. I want to put down that curtain and never to lift it again.
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