What’s with Hospitals Today? Where's the caring?

Hospitals today are not only pushing patients out the door as soon as they can; they’re also cramming in the patients they do keep. 

 

My octogenarian father checked himself into Albert Einstein Hospital in the Bronx on Sunday.  He was coughing up blood.  It wasn’t panic time because he gets lung infections every now and then.  However, this time the coughed-up blood was more copious than usual, so my father and mother trekked to Einstein’s emergency room. 

The examining doctor pronounced there was nothing to worry about.  The treatment would amount to four or so days of antibiotics.  The doctor ordered a precautionary X-ray, and decided that my dad should at least stay overnight for bed rest and observation.  My father agreed.  Everybody agreed. 

In short order, my father found himself in the typical open-in-the-back hospital gown, fastened to an IV drip bag, and tucked into a bed in the emergency room holding area.  The doctor explained that dad would be rolled up to a room as soon as one became available.  The emergency room is not a good place to hang out, the doctor pointed out; too many sick people. 

By early evening, there still was no room for dad.  My mother, also an octogenarian, was tired, and took a taxi home.  I wouldn’t be on the scene until the following day.  After it became apparent no room would be available, my father, his IV bag, and the bed he was in were rolled onto an elevator and up to the ninth floor where he would spend the night. 

Now here’s the stupid part.  There was no room for him.  So my father found himself in the rolling hospital bed along the wall of a busy hospital hallway.  When night came, as worn-out as he was, my father found it impossible to sleep.  Staff regularly moved up and down the corridor with clipboards and/or wheeling medication-laden carts; the overhead lights were in his eyes; and the personnel at the nurses’ station gabbed aloud incessantly.  This is where he was supposed to be observed and rest?  The next day, I drove my exhausted father home. 

On just about every visit I’ve made to a hospital, as a patient or visitor, I’ve seen patients in beds in corridors.  Sad, yes, but until this past weekend it wasn’t personal.  Hospitals are being closed left and right, supposedly for efficiency and economy, and we’re left with patients sleeping in passageways?  Economical, maybe, but where’s the efficiency in that?  But, maybe more importantly, where’s the caring and compassion?  What I see is indifference and, for the patient, humiliation. 

Adventures at Wendy’s

On one of my all-too-frequent visits to Wendy’s – which, unfortunately, is diabolically situated between SUNY Rockland, where I teach playwriting, and home, where I do playwriting – I ordered lunch from the value menu:  a 99¢ cheeseburger, the 99¢ fries, and a 99¢ diet coke.  As the cheery young lady behind the counter took the five-dollar bill I proffered, thinking out loud I said the change should be $1.78.  The young lady’s smile vanished when the cash register display confirmed my calculation to the penny.  The girl gawked at me in amazement; you would have thought I’d just reconciled the theory of relativity with quantum mechanics.  I had done the simplest of math in my head, and she was speechless.  It wasn’t only that I had done something beyond the young lady’s ability; it seems I had done something she didn’t know was possible.  She was dumbfounded; I was horrified. 

On another of my hyper-caloric stops at the ever-beckoning Wendy’s, I ordered my usual value menu burger, fries, and diet coke.  Once again, knowing what my change would be, this time I was the one surprised.  The young lady – a different cheery counter attendant – had given me a dollar or so more in change than I had coming.  I looked up from the money in my hand to the face of the very pleased-with-herself girl behind the counter.  I said:  “I think you’ve given me too much.”  Her smile broaden as she chirped:  “I gave you the senior citizen discount.”  She was so proud of herself that I couldn’t bring myself to smack her face.  

One-Way Ticket

There was a moment I was sure I’d be coming home from vacation in a body bag. 

I was travelling through Mexico with my girlfriend, Susan, and we stopped at Puerto Escondido, a quiet beach town on the south coast.  On our first day there, we went to the beach. 

The shore there was not the packed beaches we’re used to in the States.  It was deserted – no bathers, no lifeguard, no one in sight.  We could have been on an uninhabited island. 

The sun was high and hot, and Susan, a slender actress with long, brown hair, got busy sunning herself.  I decided to try the water.  I waded in until I was mid-chest deep, where I stood enjoying the view of the endless ocean and cloudless blue sky.

In the blink of an eye, the water level was over my head.  There had been no wave, no warning, just sudden depth.  I struggled to the surface, only to be pulled down by the undertow.  Again I fought my way up, gasping for air, and again I was sucked back down.  When I broke the surface a third time, I thought of screaming to Susan for help.  I didn’t.  Even in my panic I knew there was nothing she could do but endanger herself. 

After what seemed like an eternity of being tumbled helplessly washing machine-like beneath the waves, I was totally exhausted, spent.  In my mind’s eye, I saw Susan boarding the plane home accompanied by my body in a zippered plastic bag.  It was over; I was going to die in Mexico.  It was to be a one-way ticket. 

At that very moment of total, somewhat calm resignation to the inevitable, I found myself standing mid-chest high in the water.  The ocean had receded as suddenly as it had come. 

I staggered out of the water.  Susan smiled, lifted her camera, and snapped a shot of me as I collapsed down on the blanket next to her.  I was shaken to the core.  It wasn’t until the next day that I could speak about it to her. 

Twenty years later, that photograph of me, pale, soaked, and looking like a man returned from the grave, is hanging on the wall of my home office.  It’s a reminder to me that life can be capricious, and every day – every single day of life – is precious.