The Hospital First Night
This would be a wild evening for sure, nothing like anything I had ever experience. I had only spent three or four nights in a hospital 30 years ago and that was all in a private room. The most recent times were outpatient surgeries on my eyes. In the room at the Serbian hospital , the monitors are constantly beeping. There is some sort of warning sound that goes off when one of the vitals is out of wack was my best guess, but half the time it took a long time before anyone would come over to silence the warning and then it would go right off again.
The crazy people were yelling and talking to who knows whom.
Various serious treatments were going on throughout the room and it is already 9:00 PM. Blood transfusions, wound healing, IVs, and stump treatment for amputated limbs. All in the theater of this room. The charge nurse this night was masterful. Like a conductor making sure all the trains were on time, in Swissterzerland no less. On top of everything especially anything that might be slowing the process or disrupting the room she made me feel like somehow I was going to survive. There are two more wards of 8 and a smaller of 6, (that saw the next morning) I am not sure if she was in charge of them all, but she was a jewel and I can’t imagine what it would have been like without her
There would be periods where you did not see a nurse for a while. I think that would be true of a US hospital. However, this was when “loudmouth guy” would start going on and on. He was either snoring or yelling non-stop.
At some point, the lights go out as this is supposed to be sleeping time but I was unsure how I was going to sleep in all this mess and sound. You had the people that seemed to sleep all the time. That must be a nice skill to have. The two women in the comma for sure. Though, I would take my situation over theirs.
By three am with the beeps going off and on sometimes in sync sometimes phasing, Seven people snoring. You thought you were at some crazy minimalist concert with Steve Reich’s latest masterpiece “Life and Death Sounds From Ward 8.” If only I was in Lincoln Center with a glass of champagne.
By this time they had “Sheet guy” on horse tranquilizers as he was totally out. Fortunately, I had the internet to keep me occupied that night or I would have gone even crazier than I was. The lights come on and off all night as there are treatments throughout the night required. I don’t sleep easily anyway but for sure not tonight.
Finally, morning came, it was the quietest time in hours. I laid there and just keep thinking in the ER they told me it might be several days before the surgery to let the swelling go down and all I could think of was how I was going to survive this for three days
(I just want to say and make a point that while the situation was so different than an American hospital, the staff could not have been nicer. In the end, I got very good care from highly competent individuals including the doctors, nurses and the support staff)