That being said ....
(Of course there's a "but" when we're talking about Sarah being Zen. I can only stretch my boundaries so far in a month.)
Institution life is beautiful in that you don't have to do anything, but now that I'm off the power pain killers my cognitive processes are fully back on-line (I think). An interesting aside: I enjoy number puzzles and brought a couple of books with with me. In the week or so after surgery (when I thought my brain was fine), I thought "wow ... I bought books that were way too hard for me", and there were lots of sneak peeks at the answers. As the days pass they are getting easier. I brought them for something to do, but it turned into an interesting retrospective of progress and really highlighted to me that we are absolutely incapable of accurately assessing ourselves. It must be why some elderly still think they're fine driving, or why we don't recognize depression or stress building in ourselves.
Sorry ... back to institution life ...
When you're in your own environment, things happen according to your schedule, or the schedule required to make your family life tick along nicely. In an institution, everything runs on institution time, according to institution policy. I know I'm getting better because it is starting to drive me crazy.
- Pills at 6:15am. I don't care what time you went to sleep or if you're still asleep ... wake up !!
- Vitals check once per shift. Which means I've had my blood pressure, blood oxygen, heart rate and temperature taken at least 60 times in May. (More, because for my first week, ICU and the wards were checking once every four hours).
- Rehab guys run on their own schedule. So don't go anywhere all morning because they may come looking for you at 10, 10:35, 11 ... and if you miss them, they move on to someone else and your session may not happen.
- Naps get interrupted. After lunch, around 12:45, is the perfect time for a doze before afternoon physio, but menu lady comes waltzing in around 1:15. sigh ... half hour nap, tops.
- When you want them to bring pain killers, they're busy. Long afternoon, worked hard in physio, I'm hurting and my afternoon pain killer deadline has passed. I have to find the nurse somewhere. (Couldn't they switch up their 6am attitude with their afternoon attitude?)
- They don't enforce the visiting hours. This is rehab. Everyone will still be here tomorrow. Get the family and friends out!
- Knock before entering. I'm probably changing. That's Murphy's Law.
- The management staff on the floor are like sasquatch - lots of rumours that they exist, but you've never seen evidence of them.
- Hospital food. Enough said.
I won't let the door hit me on the way out.
Ah, yes. But you are safe there - in an environment where everyone is there to help you - where everyone has seen something worse than what your problem is - where you don't seem strange or an anomoly.
ReplyDeleteI was a bit nervous heading back out into the 'real' world after five weeks. I had a huge metal framework sticking out of my arm (my dear mother bought some shirts for me, cut one arm short, slit it to the shoulder and lined it with velcro - just so I could wear a shirt!) and I thought - I look like a freak. Everyone will stare at me. I don't look 'normal' anymore. And I didn't. I still don't.
Getting back to regular life is a big transition. Sometimes I felt like I had to put on some emotional armor when I went out - to protect myself. But I would say that, overall, people are good. They stare, but you get used to it. I just never wanted pity.
I think that no matter how open-minded you are, your view of the world, and people with disabilities, will change a bit.
It's not a bad thing.
I hope Thursday is a good day. :)
I'm really enjoying your blog.