The White Hotel

I spent Sunday to Wednesday in hospital, because I picked up a nasty little case of cellulitis. (no pictures at that link to gross you out.) This is not a fun thing to get, it's excruciatingly painful, and if you're like me and you get a whopping 40C fever with it, you get a free pass to the fourth floor for 3.5 days. It is not flesh-eating disease, but it's a nasty infection that started out of what seemed to be a normal split in the skin to a raging, fever-inducing blowout.

I have given too many people the lowdown as to what transpired to get me into the hospital, so now I'll describe the hospital stay itself. For those of you who've been hospitalized, it is no fun to be in a place with a lot of other sick people, and what you mostly want to do is sleep and get better or get more drugs and get better or get your operation or recover from your operation....but the thing you want the most is to get better and get the hell out of there. This, even though they bring you food three times a day, the nurses are usually unfailingly cheery, the doctors are brusque and to the point just like movie doctors, and you feel like you're actually on Grey's Anatomy. (No, I don't watch it.) You don't feel like you're on House but quite frankly if Hugh Laurie came in to have a poke at me I wouldn't complain.

Some parts of the hospital stay are a bit blurry, especially Sunday night into Monday morning. I do remember joking with the nurse who checked me in to the hotel, because she had to ask me a lot of questions that pertained to older patients (Do you have power of attorney over your affairs?) because they're just part of the list. The admissions doc warned me that I'd be asked about whether I wanted to be put on the DNR list, and I was asked this, but I said no, I'm young enough that you can revive me and then reassess. There were some other interesting questions about which we had a few laughs and then after checking my blood pressure (100/65) and temperature (down to 37.8C) giving me more tylenol and a jug of water, she left me. I had an iv in my arm (it stayed there for the full 3.5 days) and it and its stand were my good friends, although the iv isn't such a talkative companion.

After all that joking around though, I realized that my neighbour (I had a semi-private room) wasn't doing so well and that all of her grown children, four of them, were staying on her side of the room on chairs for the night. I also gleaned that many of the people on my floor weren't doing so well, in fact many of them were dying. My roommate passed away in the morning, unfortunately, and her son stopped to apologize if they'd kept me awake in the night. I gave my condolences to him and indicated that my own stuff kept me awake all night, which was quite true.

I got a new roommate and when I left the hotel yesterday she was doing quite well, improving markedly in fact.

It is remarkable how quickly one can become institutionalized. I knew from having babies in a hospital that food comes at 08:00, 12:00 and 17:00. At 07:50 I was waiting for the sound of the food cart, practically salivating when the tray arrived. Utterly Pavlovian. It didn't matter what was on the tray, I ate it. Questionable "omlette" thing rolled around some weird cheese combination? Best eggs I've ever tasted. Watery oatmeal? Not enough of it. Weak coffee? I should be so lucky as to get any coffee at all, so I thanked the South American gods of the coffee beans and drank it down. Milk? Normally I loathe the stuff, won't touch it, but I drank it all, happily. Macaroni and cheese in a runny salty sauce, some of which was congealed on the hot plate? Oh I couldn't have been happier to see that waiting for me. Shepherd's pie or the meat pie? Utterly spectacular (and you should consider the word spectacular and how it can used in many senses). The list goes on. My palate was tested in so many ways: the bland, the banal, the boring. Under normal circumstances, I would have pushed all of that so-called food away, claiming starvation would be a better plight than partaking of any of those particular repasts.

And yet, I could not push away a single morsel. Not the "peach applesauce" or the sugary fruit drinks or the tasteless sandwiches. Every bite went in at its appointed hour.

Twice a day my vital signs were checked, and I tried to have a lowest blood pressure contest with myself, but the lowest I got was 89/55. My temperature didn't go up again. Every day I was administered my antibiotics (ceftriazone, 2g per iv bag) which knocked me out for some reason, I don't know why. I didn't get bored until I got better, and then I wanted to get the hell out of there. Until that time I was totally into the institution and felt no need to know anything about the outside world, to look out the window, nothing. I read my magazines, did puzzles, watched crap tv.

Tuesday was Priest Day! Three of them came in to visit me and my neighbour who was also of the Catholic faith.... and since the priest from my own parish was one of them, he blessed my little head and the room did not implode in a fiery halo of destruction. Priests do the rounds of the Close to Death floor. I should have known where I was when Hub didn't have any trouble finding my room, it was the same floor where both his parents passed away almost six years ago. My sister-in-law confirmed that their rooms were on either side of the one I was in. Oh dear god.

And then I was better and I wanted to go home, which I did yesterday. I'm tired now and my finger still looks like it belongs to someone bigger and more bruised than me, and I still have the iv thing in my arm for the last trip to the hospital (it's not my hotel any more) for the antibiotics tomorrow. After that I'll be on oral antibiotics for a week or so, and then I'll just have to be careful and not have another run-in with the nasty little bacteria that decided to call me their home.

An interesting and unplanned few days.