I mean, yeah…it’s usually for a bad reason, like that you’re sick or injured…
…but in a weird way, I almost like staying in the hospital for a few days or a week or so. Just the feeling of being taken care and being pampered…having your meals delivered, having your own TV to watch all day, sleeping if you want.
It’s not the best time…but it’s certainly not the worst … well, depending on why you’re there obviously. Even so, I guess just the “having everyone do things for you” part of it gets me. : p
Also, the “food is horrible” cliche is a myth. I’ve never had bad hospital food. At one place I stayed at, you could order virtually anything from fried chicken to apple pie. Breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon and toast…maybe a lunch of teriyaki chicken…dinner of a hot open-faced roast beef sandwich. Yeah…I’m not shitting you. This is the food this hospital offered. And at other hospitals I’ve stayed at, I’ve gotten similar meals. Meals that weren’t bad at all and were actually very good and tasty. You get a long list of choices too.
Yeah, I know…God forbid something really serious happens that makes me have to stay there for a long time…
…but sometimes, for a rare moment, I think about how nice it would be to stay there while not being sick. Better than a motel. : p
The day I ended up in the ICU with stress-induced diabetic ketoacidosis was the most relaxing day I’d had all summer, working the contract from heck (see: stress).
I haven’t been hospitalized since I was a kid still living with my parents.
But yes, being taken care of and having someone bring me meals sounds great to me.
I would not say “I wish I was in the hospital!” Or find someone lucky to be hospitalized. For sure.
But if I found myself hospitalized I would not be moaning to get home.
I live alone for what it’s worth. I don’t ever have anyone taking care of me and there’s no one I would be missing if I were away. I bet that makes a difference.
When I’m sick I can sleep all day, watch my own TV as much as I want and have all my meals delivered, all in the familiar comfort of my own home. And the food is great, during dinner hours there are usually around 300 restaurants that I can choose from simply by picking up my iPad, many of them 24 hour. And I can administer my own medication, often more liberally than the hospital- because I’m a wussie about discomfort.
Sometimes I will do the above when I’m not even sick, just because it’s Saturday and the weather’s bad. And I have a friend that’ll give the place a light cleaning for $40 so I don’t have to wash the dishes.
Oh, hell no. It’s uncomfortable and boring as fuck to be in hospital, especially when you are hooked up to all manner of machines and can’t get out of bed without asking for help to get unrigged.
I’ve been a ‘guest’ in both of the major hospital systems here. In one, the food is as you describe - I was rather surprised to find out you could order what you wanted for dinner, as long as you weren’t on a restricted diet of some sort. Breakfast came as is, but there was a load of it and you could pick and choose what you wanted from the bounty provided.
In the other, the food was execrable. The doctors happened to do rounds during lunch and all gathered around to view and comment on my plate … some sort of mystery meat hiding under a slice of white bread and some soggy potatoes. Nope.
Coming home to sleep in my own bed was truly wonderful.
HELL, NO. I hate being in the hospital. I miss my family, my cats, my bed. Blood draws at 3:30 am, vitals every three hours day or night, doctor rounds at 6:00 am. I could never sleep.
That sounds like my dad’s recent hospital stay. On top of it, he was on a clear liquid diet most of that time, because he was admitted for a massive rectal bleed, which turned out to be from a diverticulum.
I go a bit stir crazy if I am not occupied by something, and for the last 20 years it’s been the internet. If I couldn’t access that I would not be very happy. Also I have only been in shared wards, which isn’t all that pleasant either.
Like Idle Thoughts, I’m one who likes being in the hospital. I think this is because I’d been in one a couple of times as a kid when I needed work done on my legs. One of those stays was for about three months when I was six. I’m used to hospitals and pretty much know what to expect. It’s kind of like staying at a hotel except a nurse pops in once in a while. I like staying at hotels, too, just because it’s different from being at home.
Every time I’ve been in hospital for more than a few hours in the last 20 years, it’s been for respiratory issues, so…isolation rooms.
So…yes, I enjoy it. Especially since the hospital added free wifi. Quietness (usually…last time I was in there was an Code Something one night just as I was getting to sleep), privacy most of the time, those really awesome beds…and I like hospital food, too. (Aside from the carrots, last time I was in…they were terrible…no flavour and a texture more or less equivalent to Styrofoam.)
I’ve never been hospitalized in the US, but I would think that worry over hospital bills not covered by insurance - having heard all too many stories of people being billed ridiculous amounts for minor services/products, some of which they never even received - would overwhelm any sense of relaxation I felt.
I was hospitalized in South Africa, where I gave birth. That was pretty nice, although I didn’t have a TV or anything. However, efficient nurses were available to help with anything at a moment’s notice.
And culturally it was fascinating, but sad: my roommate was Swahili, and her doctor was an avuncular Boer. He waltzed in at one point to congratulate her on having given an uncomplicated birth to a healthy girl, and asked how she was feeling. Her sullen response, “I TOLD you already, I have two girls and this is the third one. My husband will hate me for having a third daughter. He wanted a boy.”
Other times, I heard her crying softly. I really didn’t know what to say to her.
My US health insurance paid my medical bills so fast it made my head spin. I no longer recall the costs, but it was something like USD $800 for EVERYTHING - the OB-GYN, the hospital stay of 3 nights, the epidural, you name it. I’m pretty sure Aetna or Cigna, or whoever our insurance company was at the time, thought: “WTF, $800 for everything? They left off a zero when they filed. Let’s pay up fast so that if they come back to us later with an amended filing, we can say we already paid and make it really tough to file for a larger amount.”
I didn’t meet the gentleman personally, but when I was in college I spent some time pottering about my local hospital’s lab, invited by the Department Manager. One of the cases we had involved determining that a supposed kidney stone was CaCO[sub]3[/sub], aka “a small pebble”.
The patient was a man with Down’s Syndrome who liked the hospital better than his parents’ house; he was always trying to be admitted.
Thankfully things are changing. My brother worked with a teacher in Lesotho whose forename translated as something like “Oh no not another girl.” She named her daughter Queen and understandably preferred to go by MaQueen (Queen’s mum") herself
Incidentally Swahili is a language, a trade tongue, not an ethnicity. Bro, who has worked all over Africa, speaks Swahili.
Thankfully, my longest stay in the hospital was a precautionary overnight years ago.
I’d want to be out of there ASAP, because of factors including lack of privacy, annoying interruptions, risk of hospital-acquired infections etc.
[QUOTE=Idle Thoughts]
…sleeping if you want.
[/quote]
More like sleeping if you can, given the frequency of being disturbed for blood draws, respiratory therapy, urgings to sit up in a chair/ambulate and so on. If you don’t have a private room you can look forward to being disturbed by staff coming in to check on your neighbor, plus their stirrings and moans.
I was in the hospital last year when I had pneumonia. I have absolutely no complaints about the care I received. Excellent doctors, outstanding nurses, a private room. The food was as described in the OP: I could order pretty much anything I wanted and though not fine dining everything was quite tasty. But the whole experience was miserable. I couldn’t sleep due to the need for blood draws, breathing treatments, etc. throughout the night, in addition to the oxygen and IVs I was hooked up to. Obviously, I understand the necessity of all that but it wasn’t a pleasant or comfortable time.
It was quite a relief to come home. I could actually sleep as long as I wanted to. And my husband brought me whatever I wanted to eat and anything else I needed or wanted.
These are exactly what I disliked most the last time I was admitted. Moreover, it was a teaching hospital. I was one of the “less sick” patients on the floor who also didn’t mind chatting, so they’d bring the med students in to see me at random times. They’d examine me, and I’d tell them what was going on with me. Consequently I was one of the few patients the nurses didn’t have to worry about.
It was the tedium which got to me, much like the tedium of being on bed rest at home. I wasn’t allowed to go off the floor, so a nurse would have to fetch magazines and such for me. They didn’t have much choice with cable stations (no HBO, for instance) and I’m not a big TV watcher anyway. I did have my laptop, though, thank god. The food was surprisingly good (I wasn’t on a restricted diet so I could pretty much pick and choose what I wanted). I also liked the fact that, because what I had at the time made me unsteady on my feet, somebody who was trained was always around to help me get to the toilet, wash my hair, etc.
