9 Years Past My Shelf Life

(four)

The hours just about drove me mad.

You are supposed to be recuperating, but there’s no real rhyme or reason to how they did things. OK, there was… but it wasn’t always very good for me.

Where exactly does one start the typical day in the rehab facility? I guess we’ll start at 6 am. One of the nurses comes around, wakes you and gives you your meds. Feel free to swallow them down and doze back off to sleep.

They’ll be right back at 7am to wake you up and help get you ready for your day. Breakfast starts arriving around 7:30 (except for those days that it doesn’t). Morning consists of food and bathing and waiting for your daily therapy assignments which may start you at 11 am, or possibly start you as late as 2pm… they come up with each day’s therapy assignments on the morning of. Lunch is in the midst of all of this.

Because of how most insurance plans work, most people are shoveled out of the Bone and Joint Center within about a week. Just long enough for you to slightly decompress from your severe injury and to be properly trained in wiping your own ass (if that’s at all possible). This is why there are no long-term schedules and why they come up with the daily schedule every morning. A workers compensation case like mine was actually the rarity. They got to keep me in there for 45 days. They got to really work with me and prepare me for the new life I was going to be leading.

But before I get off on some rant about the bullshit insurance industry, let’s continue on with the afternoon. From late morning to mid afternoon, you’ll typically have 2 to 4 different sessions with different therapists each day. Depending on your injury, you’d get therapy combinations based on your specific needs. (Saturday and Sunday are non-therapy days)

Dinner is around 5:30, and the evening visiting hours are from 5 until 9.

People are usually given some sleep aid and most are out by 11.

The people that collect blood come around at 4am.

I called them “the vampires”.