A couple of weeks ago I was in the hospital AGAIN! This time it seems my gall bladder got jealous of my pancreas getting all the attention and had a hissy fit. I figured, with all the uprisings going on in the Middle East, why should my body be any different? My roommate, God bless his soul, was a 96 year old Vet.
Everyday, all day long, people were in and out yelling at him. "MR. SMITH GOOD MORNING". "MR. SMITH. IT'S TIME TO DRAW BLOOD". "MR. SMITH, IT'S TIME TO TAKE YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE'. He was usually asleep and his immediate startled response was "I'm not wet".
At first this was a little amusing, but very quickly became troubling. I remember my last hospital visit was to have an operation to have part of my colon removed because another tumor was detected. After I came out of ICU I went downhill fast. I started to have extreme chills and drifted off to the dark side. I awoke being wisked down a hallway with doctors yelling at me "Mr. Riddick, BLAH BLAH BLAH". I recall thinking"They only yell at old people and people dying. THIS IS NOT GOOD". I did not know at the time I had a temperature of 103+ and a white blood cell count of 30,000+. Infection! Fast foward.
When Mr. Smith's meals came there was no one around. Where were all the yelling people? He just laid there asleep, oblivious to the fact that it was mealtime. On the one hand I was glad he was in the room with another Vet. On the other hand, sorry to say, I was terrified he was in the VA hospital. Is this what I have to look forward to 39 years from now? Cold food or no food if no one comes to help me?
I would get up and pull the tray stand over him and wake him up. I'd say in a normal tone "Hey man, how you doing"? At first he would say, as usual, "I'm not wet". I'd say "Hey, I'm not the keepers". Then he'd say "No complaints". WOW. No complaints. I hope I'm that cool when I get his age (Hey, I plan to get there). I'd help him with his meal and he would go back to sleep. The LPN or health tech would come in just before dietary would come to retrieve his tray and say "Oh, I see he ate a little bit". HOW?
It was just our little secret.
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Posted by: supra skytop | 11/07/2011 at 06:51 PM