Bob's Blog 4-5-14: When Will I.C.U. Again?

Bob Here.

One of the many commonalities among dialysis patients is that many (most? all?) of us have spent a significant amount of time in hospitals.

Between being diagnosed and treated for kidney failure and any and all associated ills, we've all seen our shares of OR's, ER's, EMT's, RN's, MD's, and BMW's.

Wait a minute...BMW's?

Oh yeah. Big Money Wasters.

Anyway, there's just one little issue with inevitably finding ourselves somehow imbedded in these fine institutions.

Well, okay, maybe it's not such a little issue. And I should just speak for myself on this, I shouldn't assume anyone else feels the same way.

My issue is that I hate hospitals.

And I'm not just talking a normal little everyday dislike here.

I hate them.

I really, Really, REALLY hate them.

It's so bad that even driving by those little blue directional signs on the highway gives me the willies. That's how much I hate them.

And, I should point out that my feelings are not strictly associated with being on dialysis, although that certainly hasn't helped.

I remember I was in a doctor's office at a very young age. I was up on the examination table and this guy puts an ice cream stick down my throat and shines a light in there.

I seriously didn't like that, so I bit the doctor's hand, jumped down off the table, sent a table full of equipment flying all over the room, and ran out into the hallway looking for an exit.

And my experiences in medical institutions have been downhill from there ever since.

So, what are my main complaints about hospitals?

Well, let's see, you live on a table feeling like a slab of meat at the butcher shop; they make you wear this cloth that they call a gown but when you wear this piece of cloth you truly have no secrets to the world, if you know what I mean; they put you in a room that looks like it was a padded cell in a previous life; everybody talks to you like you're two years old (Are we ready to take our medicine now?); the food seems like it's whatever was rejected as inedible from the local prison; people wake you up at all hours of the night to roll you over and take your blood; and you get asked a hundred times a day for your name and date of birth but when your birthday rolls around, nothing happens.

Oh, and the place is full of doctors. Yikes.

Sometimes I can't believe the questions these medical personnel ask you when you're in the hospital.

A few years ago, I had the misfortune to break my left wrist.

So I was in the hospital waiting to get it x-rayed, and this guy in medical garb comes prancing in.

He picks up my chart, flips through the pages and says, "So, what are you here for?"

Now, keep in mind, I'm sitting there with one of those huge splints and an ice bag on my left wrist, sitting in the waiting room in a lot of pain.

"Ingrown toenail," I said.

He just looked at me as if that didn't register.

"Oh...uh...which toe?" he stammered.

I said, "Oh , sorry, did I say ingrown toenail? I meant hernia."

"Hernia?"

"Yeah. But I think the problem is in my left big toe."

This really confused him, so he picked up my chart again, and read it more carefully this time.

"It says here you've got a wrist injury," he said after a while.

"Oh yeah. You know what? Between my toe and my hernia, I forgot about my wrist."

It suddenly dawned on this genius that I might have been being sarcastic.

"So, which wrist is it?" he asked.

I just sat looking at the guy as if to say, Are you serious?? I'm sorry, but I just can't help but be sarcastic now.

I said, "If I told you it was my right wrist, is that what you would x-ray?"

He said, "Well, it looks like the splint is on your left wrist."

I acted all upset, looked down and said, "Oh crap!"

The guy had apparently had enough fun, so he put my chart down and left. As he was walking out, I yelled after him, "I'll let you know how it all turns out..."

Some of the doctors who bomb into your room at the hospital are just making their rounds, they don't know anything about you, you might never have seen them before, and you might never see them again afterwards.

When I first went in for kidney failure, I probably wasn't in the best frame of mind. It was late at night and some doctor came wandering in. He was a young looking guy with a beard and looked like he hadn't slept in a month.

He wasn't much on small talk either, just went through the motions checking my heart and lungs. Then he was about to leave.

"Do you have any questions?" he asked me as he was hurrying out the door.

"Have you got a cigarette?"

That stopped him in his tracks. "A cigarette?"

"Uh huh."

"Uh...no...sorry."

"How about booze. You got any booze?"

"Uh...no."

"Okay. Never mind. I'll see if I can get them somewhere else."

Now, keep in mind that I didn't drink or smoke at the time, but those were the only questions I could think of.

He was looking at me doubtfully as he left the room.

As insufferable as hospital stays can be, most of the time you just have to suck it up if it's a short visit. But longer stays can become insufferable.

That first time being diagnosed with kidney failure and starting dialysis was a longy.

The stresses of a long hospital stay can be compounded if, like me, you are what was described by one of my nurses during that first long stay as, "one miserable cowboy of a patient."

She claims that, after the second week when she told me I couldn't go home, I threw a pillow at her. I, of course, denied all such charges.

It got to the point where I was intentionally contradicting all their medical instructions, hoping they'd all just get tired of the nonsense and kick me to the curb.

After a particularly irritating meeting with the dietician where she gave me a primer on all the things that I couldn't eat anymore as a dialysis patient, I told the nurse that I wanted to go down to the gift shop on the first floor. She told me that it was okay, but I had to wear a mask.

So, I went down the elevator wearing my aforementioned flimsy gown, a sorry excuse for a bathrobe that looked like it had been dropped off a cliff, and my surgical mask.

Which was all fine except evil little me didn't go to the gift shop.

I went to the pizza parlor across the street.

Needless to say, I was quite the sight walking in there with my robe blowing in the wind and my surgical mask. I looked like the Grim Reaper in his PJ's.

So I walk through the front door and pretty soon, everyone in the restaurant is staring.

I had a wild impulse to yell out something like, "I am Death! And you are all mine."

But I managed to keep that to myself.

Then I calmly walked up to the counter and ordered a slice of pepperoni.

Just to make matters worse, I carried my pizza back up to my room and made sure everyone in attendance saw that I had it.

As I moseyed on by the nurses' station, I theatrically held the slice up in front of me. I think I said something like, "No more hospital food for this dog," and just kept on walking. As I reached my door I said, "Or is it dog food for this hospital? Hmm..."

I glanced back and it was like I was looking at a portrait of the hospital staff. Nobody was moving, they were just staring at me with their jaws agape.

I thought, quite the little attention grabber tonight, aren't we?

A couple of minutes later, one of the few nurses with whom I was on halfway decent terms came over and stood in my doorway.

"So, how was the pizza?" she asked.

"Heavenly."

"Do you want to tell me what this is all about?"

I said, "Oh nothing really. It's just that the nutritionist was in here describing all the things in pizza that were bad for me, and well, it's kind of like the forbidden fruit, you know? As soon as someone tells you all about why you can't eat it, you know you just gotta have some."

She then lectured me in a nice way about why I shouldn't have done that, but I'm sure she could tell that it was having no impact.

So, over the years, I've done my best to be a compliant dialysis patient, watch my fluid, keep my diet under control, stay active, don't miss treatments, yada, yada, yada.

And hopefully everything will remain stable.

'Cause if I have to go back to the hospital, all bets are off!

Thanks for reading. Take care.