Feeling a Little Ogrevated

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Hello.

I was in a room in Georgetown University Hospital the other day, being treated for a sudden alarming rise in my blood pressure. It was in a ward ringed by private rooms. There were also occupied cots in the hallway, dozens of them. I presumed these were the uninsured. This arrangement seemed consistent with the solemn religious tenet of giving balm to the needy. The place is run under Jesuit principles and, despite the stresses caused by pain and discomfort, an air of calm and civility prevails.

Suddenly, an earsplitting growl broke the silence, a roar like a lawn mower starting up on a quiet suburban street.

“WHERE’S MY FUCKING URINAL?”

“GET YOUR FUCKING HANDS OFF ME.”

I went to the hall to check this out.

The noise was coming from a gargantuan, raggedy bearded man, his fleshy parts oozing out of his hospital gown in disturbing places.

“I WANT A BEDPAN! I HAVE TO TAKE A SHIT!”

Nurses fretted.

“You can walk to the bathroom, sir,” one nurse said. “It’s right there.” She was pointing to a door about fifteen feet away.

“YOU ARE SHIT ON RYE.”

(I was told later he was there for an eye problem. His legs were functioning.)

A bigger nurse, a guy, stepped in and pointed to the bathroom. “It’s there.”

“FINE,” the big man said in the way one frames it as a threat. Apparently, it was.

“Eww!” cried a nurse, as she backed away.

The man-beast had deliberately fouled his sheets.

Eventually, he was told he was being discharged — apparently on schedule.

“GIVE ME MY WALKER,” he bellowed. “I CAME WITH A WALKER.”

“You did not come with a walker, sir.”

“YOU ARE A LIAR.”

And so forth. Eventually he was escorted out, still bellowing, as orderlies cleaned up his mess.

—

My point: Next time you get impatient with, or frustrated by, a nurse, please remember what they sometimes have to put up with. Show some forbearance.

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I, for example, held my grumpiness in check after being forced to spend one of the worst nights of my life there. It was completely sleepless but not because of illness or insomnia. It was because the hospital simply declined to let me sleep.

That is the thing about hospitals — they are merciful places of healing that simply will not let you obtain the universal natural medicine, slumber. They wake you through the night for meds, for blood draws, for blood pressure tests, for injections. I have been awakened in order to be given a sleeping pill. Plus, because they are infusing you with saline solution constantly, from a drip, you are awakened at least six times a night by the need to pee. This is even more than how my prostate enslaves me. All of this is normal, so I bore it stoically.

But the biggest annoyance was that the machine next to me was malfunctioning. It was attached to electrodes on my chest, and its job was to alert me, and the nursing station, if I was suffering heart or respiratory distress. It kept going off for no reason — BRAAP BRAAP BRAAP — and didn’t stop until someone came in to deal with it, which didn’t happen until I rang for help. I argued there was something wrong with it, but the nurses said it was merely “very sensitive.”

I was informed it didn’t like a lot of movement, so I had to stay pretty stationary on my back. One nurse asked me, with a mild sense of accusation, “Is it possible you put your elbows on the bed? It doesn’t like that.” (The best indication that the staff knew the machine was ridiculous was that each braaping was also delivered to the nurses’ station, and they never once came in on their own to check on me. To them, evidently, it was like those carbon monoxide alarms that can be triggered by, like, armpit sweat.)

So there I was, trying to lie completely still, at Marine-like attention, obedient to authority, while trying to get to sleep for maybe twenty minutes at a time, between visits by nurses dispensing pills, drawing blood, etc. Alas, if I needed to use the bathroom, I had to separate myself from the machine by disconnecting a plug — and this also triggered the braaping. So I knew I had to jog to the bathroom and pee frantically — bladder muscles were exercised — because the machine had a diabolical system where after about one minute of braaping, it intensified in speed and volume, to ….

BRAAPBRAAPBRAAPBRAA

A doctor came in around 8 in the morning, and I got a form of satisfaction. When I complained that the machine was clearly malfunctioning, he sort of rolled his eyes — what did I know? — and began to listen to my heart and lungs. Just as he finished and told me everything sounded great, the machine started going braap braap braap, reporting that there was something wrong with my heart and lungs.

I’m back home now and doing okay. For the moment. More on this later.

—

I hope you all saw that Ted Cruz remained on vacation in Greece after the horrifying disaster in Texas. His office reported he came home “as fast as humanly possible,” but cameras caught him touring the Parthenon 24 hours after the flood; The Daily Beast instantly determined that there were several Athens-to-San Antonio flights he could have taken before the one he took. Even if they were all booked, he’s a U.S. Senator responding to a terrible tragedy, and accommodations would surely have been made. Plus, you know, one can charter a plane. This is the second time Cruz has done this in times of crisis in his home state: Last time, he went to Cancun during a deadly winter storm in Texas.

And now, today’s primary extraneous Gene Pool Gene Poll:

Please tell us any funny hospital stories you have. Do it here:

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