It is 5:50 a.m. And morning has finally come to “Chez Northside” (Northside Hospital). A bed was provided so that I could spend the night with Carol and monitor her progress. Okay, it wasn’t a bed; it was a solid wood window seat (overlooking the dumpsters) with a thin foam rubber pad that briefly pretends to buffer the unyielding hard wood underneath it. Because this is a typical hospital, morning came at 1:45a.m., 3:30 a.m., 4:45a.m. – and 5:30 a.m. respectively. Here, they wake the patient from a sound sleep intermittently during the night to administer sleeping pills, so these intrusions briefly took my mind off of my newly acquired back pain.
Carol is doing very well, seems happy, and is exceeding everyone’s expectations. It looks like they will release her at about 3 p.m. today. She is cheery, and raring to go.
Since I was last hospitalized, the medical community seems to have come to the conclusion that “germs cannot survive a cold hospital room,” and they chill their rooms down to a point where you could hang meat there. They keep these rooms so cold that the patient no longer jumps when confronted with a refrigerated stethoscope that they have used to get patients’ undivided attention for many years. They did give me a simple cotton blanket to keep me warm, but I think that it was designed for a Munchkin. I am freezing!
It is interesting to witness a one-night hospital stay through the eyes of a well person. Every time I have been confined to a hospital, I have been too sick to notice all of the fun they seem to have here. I just noticed that Carol has some frost on her upper lip; but, she says that it takes her mind off of the pain.
We are looking forward to heading back to the mountain after 3 p.m. It will be nice to get home again. Thanks for all of your good wishes. Family and good friends are really a blessing.
