The funny side of the hospital bed

Staying in hospital is not fun. It’s very dull. Through the discomfort, however, humour pierces through.

Checking into hospital is similar to checking into a hotel, only you have to be there at 6am*. The downside is no promise of sampling local fare and exploring a small, characterful town. The upside is that your ‘room’ is ready early, and you’re not faced with stowing your bags in a weird luggage twilight zone.

Name. Check. Surname. Check. Address. Check. Religion. Religion? A strange question to me. ‘Jewish slash agnostic’ seemed a passable answer, despite the raised eyebrows of the receptionist. But why the question? They weren’t suddenly switching out the surgeon for a Rabbi? Was this a thinly-veiled way of saying if things really go pear-shaped, we want to know who to call? It was a serious a operation, but I didn’t realise this serious.

My father dropped me off at the hospital. Unsurprisingly, he does appear older than me. The staff welcomed him to the ward with great fanfare. Setting off this ageist trap, gave my father great joy. Me, a wry smile.

When you check into the hospital they make you sign away a number of liabilities, including responsibility for valuables. In the room you have a locker with a 4-digit code. Great — laptop, cellphone, and wallet all safe until after the operation. No sooner are you in bed post op, however, does the challenge of being immobile and getting your goodies out of the locker dawn on you. So much for keeping that code a state secret.

By the time the surgeon got to me it was late in the day, and he had notched up a few hours in theatre. I was in the pre-op loading bay making the final pit stop where they check you are who you’re supposed to be. The surgeon popped by. He apologised for running late, but assured me better now than to hang out till next week. Agreed. He asked if I was good to go. Yup. My partner, who is herself a medical doctor, darted back ‘are you fine?’. The surgeon delivered quite the riposte: spirit fingers. I took the joke as a proxy for confidence.

Getting in and out of bed after a back operation becomes an art form. It’s all about technique. A bed ballet, but with a blunt name: the logroll. At first, the time to get from a standing to a sitting position seemed an eternity. The fear, akin to being high up on a diving board about to jump into a cold abyss.

The coffee is bad. The food, too, but the coffee is really bad. For some reason I kept ordering it in the hope, that by some small miracle it would improve. My dreams were always crushed. Race to the bottom on catering. Custard and jelly over-supply.

A hospital is not a good place to bring body image issues. I am surprised there wasn’t a form to sign them away. Not being able to bend down at all brings with it having to make a host of delicate requests. Being caught with your pants down has new meaning. I preferred the unfazed-seen-it-all-ness of the older staff members. Awkward for me, was standard operating procedure.

Rate your pain on a scale from 1–10? At first confusing to calibrate, I soon learnt to practice an amount of pain inflation in order to unlock that fiercely guarded medicine cabinet next to my bed.

The amount of pain meds you consume is inversely correlated with stomach activity. Things, well, they, don’t. The first time you go to the loo is traumatic at best. Time heals all.

Jokes aside, thank you to all the healthcare providers. Were it not for you, I am sure it would take much longer to see the funny side of this experience.

P.S. you might want to read the first installment in this hospital diaries saga:

*I was in hospital for back surgery.