So help me, if there's another hospital stay in my near future, I'm going to hire a hit man — for myself! It's not that I don't cherish life and sure enjoy the heck out of my loved ones; it's just that I miss my dignity when you're helplessly lying on your back and at the mercy of others. Besides, maybe the hospital staff already has you pegged as not the sharpest needle in your intravenous when, upon your admission, they toss you a dressing gown that's a wraparound and you have the snaps going every which way, but the right way.
"You gotta be smarter than the snaps," an irate nurse's aide informs me, as she yanks the nightgown around me, and I'm mortified that she sees my bare rear end. I don't know whom I dislike more, her or the designer of this beauty. If only I had known I was going to be admitted, I would have grabbed my long johns with the button-up back, for my mom certainly didn't raise any senior flaunting floozy.
I'm anxious to just settle back on my pillow and get a little rest; after all, that's why I'm in the hospital, isn't it? I have an acute attack of diverticulitis, again, and mega doses of antibiotics are being pumped into me. Physically and psychologically I'm prepared to handle that, but it's those little aggravations that I think will be wearing me down. No sooner do I lay back when suddenly, the machine that my intravenous is attached to, starts beeping for absolutely no reason. I decide to not ring the bell right away; certainly the nurses on the floor will hear it and come running in. What a dreamer I am, and how hard of hearing they must be. Several minutes go by until I can no longer handle that beep, beep, beep that's boring a hole in my brain. I ring for the nurse and eventually she saunters in. "You must have moved your arm, you have to keep it perfectly straight!" she orders.
"You mean as straight as when rigor mortis sets in?" I lightly answer.
"Hey, we don't appreciate talk like that, especially with people dying around here all the time," she warns.
Oh, how I'm tempted to say that that doesn't say much about the care you might be giving us, but there's no room for sarcasm if I want to get out of here alive. Like in any profession, you have the highly skilled and the “great pretenders.” Thank God my primary doctor comes with a four-and-a-half-star rating out of five. I looked it up on the computer, but then I read that one shouldn't believe everything he or she reads on there.
There's a perk here. My roommate is very pleasant, but I think she might be a big exaggerator. I mean, she's a good 150 pounds overweight and she told the hospital doctor that she eats only one meal a day and could live on salads because she loves them so.
"How about cookies, cakes and pies?" he asks.
"Don't have any of that junk in my house," she insists.
When lunch rolls around she's ordered two packages of those Lorna Doone cookie chips and has the nerve to keep eying mine.
I'm just dozing off when my surgeon comes in. I don't know how I can ever face him again, because in my nervousness, I press the button on my bed that makes your feet go up instead of the one that makes your upper torso do so.
"You're going the wrong way," he points out, as the blood rushes all to my head. I'm more embarrassed than that nurse seeing me half naked. He tells me that surgery for my condition is inevitable. "I'll have to cut a part of your infected colon out, but that won't be until about a month, until you've healed, so get as much rest as you can," he advises. He's telling me all this right in a hospital that probes and prods you and makes you feel like a head of cattle.
I'm not even going to check out how many rating stars he has!