YOU wake up one day, it’s a lovely sunny day, go for a walk around your garden.
The next thing you’re lying side down, a huge pain in your hip, you can’t move.
“Will I call an ambulance”, my anxious wife calls out. No not yet! I’ll just lay here for moment. It might be OK!
Famous last words as the ambulance arrives, now I hate hospital nights, with a passion.
So was absolutely overjoyed that I would need to spend the next 10 days in hospital with a half hip replacement.
So, for those of you with little hospital experience, this is for you.
First, leave all your inhibitions at the door nothing is sacred at a hospital.
Talk to the nurses, they’re there to help and assist, don’t feel it’s too much trouble.
I’m a sensitive person, the smells of hospital don’t do much for me, especially around meal times, so much so that there was hardly a mouth full taken at each meal for 10 days.
Of course, this is not all that good for you, when asked when you last movement was.
“But I haven’t eaten much“, I protested. Just take these two tablets, they will help and here are a couple more for the pain.
Shudder the thought if those two tablets work, and its night time, and its urgent, and the nurse is busy with others in dire need.
The mind works overtime, I hope it’s the only thing. Then there’s the bottle, one size fits all, gee one must be careful, it’s like a two edged sword, drink plenty of water they say, you do and then what is the consequence.
I know the hospital staff are doing their best, but now I swallow four times as many tablets as when I went in.
Morning, night and in between, in they come, sorry to wake you, just a blood pressure check, stick this metal rod under tongue, hold out you finger, all done, good!
A little hard to get someone at shift change, you hope they pass on everything important.
Then a strange thing happens, they have supervisors to check that staff are doing their jobs properly, even cleaners. How many work at Ipswich general hospital, I don’t know, I must have met over 50 different nurses, from those new to nursing to the RN’s.
The saddest part is that because it’s a general hospital the doctors must take those more serious first, so even if you are booked in to have urgent surgery, you can be shunted back further in the queue, but that’s life.
There were many nurses who went over and beyond what was expected, many sympathised that the beds, even though they moved in all directions, were uncomfortable for those sleeping on their backs at night.
Staying in hospital allows you to see the shortcomings of the system, the extra work that staff do, beyond their calling and the system that’s crying out for change.
It allows you to see how people, supposedly knowledgeable, muck things up for others.
On the other hand, one can see the huge wastage of “one use” materials to protect against germs which unfortunately is an ongoing cost, and then you know where the money goes.
The hospital runs like a well-oiled machine.
Thank you Ipswich General, we do indeed live in a lucky country.
