My Day at the Hospital

You may remember after reading a previous post, that I have a strong aversion to anything remotely connected with medicine, doctor's offices, and hospitals. Yesterday, I had to go to the hospital for a little "procedure".

First, they make you come there at 5:00 a.m. so you can wait another five hours to be called in for surgery. Then they give you what they call the "little stick" which is where they run the 7 inch needle into your arm to start your I.V. Then you strip , don the beautiful hospital gown and wait your turn. Finally, someone comes with a 10-inch wide cold table to transport you to the holding pen just outside the operating room. You can remain in this pen for a long time while they ask you your name and date of birth and what you are there for about 100 times - (it seems to me they should know that stuff already) Finally, they come to take you to the operating room.

Let me assure you that an operating room is the most foreboding place I know. It looks like the inside of a Star Wars Space Station. The temperature is kept at 60 degrees and every person in there except the patient is wrapped from head to toe with hats, coats, gloves, and masks - nothing exposed but their eyes ! The patient, on the other hand is lying there naked on a cold slab of steel with a klieg light directed at his or her worst parts.

They hook you up to about 25 monitors and show you the tray of knives, chisels, hammers, saws, probes, tubes, etc., and then wonder why your blood pressure just went up 20 points ! Finally, the little guy with the needle says, "We are going to give you a little something to make you rest", and by the time you say the "O" part of "Okay", you are gone.

Minutes later you are back in that holding pen without a clue about what went on in that cold room. They give you the complimentary flat-tasting Sprite and send you back home; in my case, with a resolve never to say a word about any ailment again for fear of being taken back to that dreadful place ! By my count, I have been in a hospital 3 times (other than to give birth) so I figure that's about 20 + years between visits. Hopefully, yesterday's visit will hold me another 20 years !