Hospital 101: Day 1

When faced with large hospital beds, carrying sedated patients being pushed by hospital staff who are single-minded and forward driven, I will never win. Always yield. I am a insect to them and they won't even notice the bump as they go over me.  From now on, when approaching hallway intersections, I will consider checking the multiview mirrors so as to yield before me and my little EKG machine become a casualty.

If I reach a hallway with an apparent dead end, I need to remember that if I look around and find a little grey box, my ID badge is magic and can open doors that look like walls.

Scrubs really are the best!  They're comfy and actually considered "professional".  But beware of the drawstring in the pants.  If you don't tie them right, it becomes impossible to untie them, especially when the bathroom break is long overdue and the pager is going off. Again.  Damp spots on scrubs are considered less professional and are less comfy.

There are an infinite number of hallways in a hospital (known only to staff) that all look identical, yet spit you out into totally different departments. Some areas of the hospital don't have a third floor, never mind that the second floors don't meet in one section, and so require different elevators (or with extremely good compass you can find the really awkward staircase)  Its really going to suck if I get an emergency page and get swallowed up in the maze and don't get there in time.

When people are in crisis, time within a hospital becomes warped.  It has it's own sense of pacing, very  independent and separate from the flow of the rest of humanity.  It is a world unto itself. Thus, being suspended in this time warp for 12 hours at a time, leaves one a little disoriented when trying to reunite with the rhythms of those on the outside.

Patients eat food.  Visiting family members eat food.  Support personnel like department secretaries and such eat food.  But the rest of us seem destined to be self sustaining since one little 30 minute break isn't much time to consume enough food to last for the other twelve hours as I turbo-jet from one department to another.

Every person. Every one. No matter how they see themselves in their pretend life, become very vulnerable and scared when faced with their own physical failing.  And so do their families.  We were designed that way.  To treasure our physical gift, to want to cling to relationships we fear to be separated from.  There is no them and us when it comes down to the final chapter. Everyone is an us. We always were. Age, race, social class and politic fade away as each contemplate the possibility that the turn may be over and we will be returning home. All of us, to the same home, same parents. We're all just kids, in the same crazy family.

And that's just what I learned on the first day.....