Monday, 20 June 2005 - 9:35 PM EDT
Name: Hospital visitors pay attention!
I felt like the world's biggest witch (with a capital B) after staying with a relative and being so
upset with people for calling or popping in when she was in so much pain.
They'd be trying to adjust her IV and oxygen and the potassium was incredibly painful in the
IV. The phone would be ringing on the other side of the bed and someone else would come barging in and have a seat up next to her bed ...she was given the potassium because she was so bloated and this was to help
her go to the bathroom so she was up and down to try to get to the bathroom and those gowns are "open in the back). So she'd lay there and suffer til they decided she really wasn't going to do anything but moan once in
awhile and would leave....and someone else would come darting in.
At one time when "the curious came to have a front row seat at the sideshow" I noticed one of the two the nurses went to get a high blood pressure pill. Later a couple of relatives asked what the numbers were. I have no idea
what is high but when I said 234/107... they said it was stroke level.
A friend said they just went through this with her father-in-law who was in the hospital and everyone kept calling and coming up until they had to put a "NO VISITORS!" sign on the door. Just send a card, people!!! In Small Town America ...this is what people do!"
I will not annoy you or your family by coming down to drag up a chair to sit and stare at you while you are trying to rest and wait for you to wake up so we can visit about nothing....nor will I call. And if you will do the same for me I will feel honored.
All of these years when people would say they were going up to the hospital to see someone I'd feel guilty that I didn't do that even though I never felt that it was right to "invades someone's privacy".
And if they had given me an IV full of stuff to make me go to the bathroom I would not want someone in there while I way laying there trying to smile and visiting with them while praying that they'd leave and I could remove the oxygen, sit up slowly and drag my IV's with me to the bathroom!
