Life in Memorial Medical Center

We have had a busy and tumultuous last ten days or so, and it continues.

Writer Princess spent two weekends ago in the hospital receiving IV antibiotics for an infection. She was released to recover at home, but she was right back last Saturday for full abdominal surgery to clean out an abscess. So Mrs. Poolman and I have been splitting up the hospital duty with Son-In-Law for the past four days. Never a dull moment.

I have not been a hospital patient myself since I had my tonsils removed when I was five years old. I barely remember that. Just as well. My experience with hospitalized family since then has me convinced the best thing you can do with a hospital stay is to avoid it.

I spent last night on the overnight shift with WP. I thought sleep and rest were supposed to be great healers? If so, why don’t hospital staffs let their patients sleep? I don’t think we went more than 20 minutes between people coming in and out of the room for one reason or another.  I certainly understand the need to bathe patients, but at five o’clock in the morning? Seriously?

Until late last night, WP was in an intermediate care unit with restricted visitors. So she has not been deluged by friends and other family. That was not the case last weekend. Why don’t people understand — with the possible exception of new mothers, people are in the hospital because they are sick or injured, not because they feel like hosting a party. If you visit, stay a few minutes and then LEAVE. It is not appropriate to pull up a chair, turn on the TV and order a pizza. (OK, I’m exaggerating a little here…about the pizza, that is.) At one point last weekend, I counted eight visitors in WP’s hospital room at one time. That is too much. (Mea culpa – Mrs. P and I should have done a better job at crowd control.) Note to hospital visitors – show the patient you care about them by visiting, and then show it even more by going home.

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An exciting weekend at the hospital

Never a dull moment around Casa Poolman. Mrs. P and I have been spending most of the past two days at a local hospital. Our daughter, Writer Princess, had been feeling bad for the past week, and had seen her primary care doc twice. She was feeling much worse on Thursday evening. So we (Son-in-law included, of course) trekked to the emergency room. It turns out she had an infection and needed to be admitted for two days of IV antibiotic therapy. By the time the docs figured that out, we had spent the entire night in the ER waiting room. If you have not had the pleasure of such an experience, this is one you can take off your bucket list.

 It appears that healthy-living is not high on the priority list for most of the majority of ER patients. Most had figures similar to my cat, Sid, a Manx. When we first got Sid, I remember reading that you could draw a Manx cat by just using a series of circles.  The same could be said of the people we spent Thursday night with.

 I think it is true what they say, that hospitals are the worst place to go when you are sick. A woman came in and sat near me. Every couple of minutes she tried to cough up a lung, and then hung her head between her legs and moaned, “Oh Lawdy, oh Lawdy.”  If I saw her on the street, I would take her to the hospital. But we were already there. What to do? Actually, what I did was to move across the room to avoid her droplets.

The big party in WP’s room.

 I didn’t realize hospitals were so popular. I know that insurance companies want the hospitals to move the patients through and get them out the door as quickly as possible. So I was very surprised that WP had to wait several hours in the ER before being transferred to a room…because there was not am empty bed in the house. Really? What am I missing? This does not look like it’s the hot spot in town.

 So it’s Saturday afternoon and WP is a little past the half-way point of her 48 hours of IV therapy. We are working shifts with Son-In-Law to keep someone at the hospital all the time. We’re still looking around for the party that is keeping this place filled. Haven’t found it yet.

Lake trip, broken things and alot of clothes

Summer is probably my favorite season of the years. It gets hot here in coastal Georgia, but that just makes the water in our pool that much warmer. Mrs. Poolman is happy.

We have been fairly busy.  Two weekends ago Mrs. P and I drove up to visit my middle sister and her husband at their lake house near Anderson, S.C.  This is their second summer on Lake Hartwell and they are really enjoying it. The house isn’t all that large, but it is very nice and has a great screened porch overlooking the lake. Our daughter, Writer Princess, and son-in-law also drove up. We had a very pleasant weekend of eating, drinking and lounging around.

Ever since we got back, we have been dealing with “things broken.” We have used the internet for our home phone service. When we got back to town from the lake, we discovered the wireless router that handles the phone service as well as our regular WiFi was apparently fried. I think we are going to join the ranks of the Generation X or Y, or whatever it is, and just blow off our traditional home telephone line. We are still working on a way to keep our home telephone number. That is the one people have used to contact us for 20 years. It’s a bold new world out there folks.

Then our washing machine decided to go on strike. The repairman came but had to order a new part. Hopefully it will be running tomorrow.

In the meantime, I have two and a half weeks of laundry piled on the floor of my closet. The sad thing is — I haven’t really been inconvenienced. Mrs. P says, “You have more clothes than God.” (Of course, God is a spirit and doesn’t need clothes, so I guess that is no mean feat.”)

I really don’t do much shopping or buy many clothes. I just don’t throw away or recycle my clothes very often. For example, if you just buy one pack of underwear and a couple of golf shirts each year, by the time ten or 12 years pass by, you have a bunch of underwear and shirts. That’s my story.

Independence Day falls in the middle of the week this year, which is a bit of a bummer. Mrs. P is up for a “party.” We have invited about a dozen people over for an afternoon pool party. Ribs, potato salad, baked beans, etc. Should be fun. The guest list includes our favorite 22-month old twins, Helen and Brittany. Another friend is bringing her two grandsons, roughly five and three. Should be fun, but it definitely won’t be dull.

Infant to 12 in under three minutes

I have some posts stacked up in the back of my brain for when I have the time to sit down and actually write something. In the meanwhile, I ran across this video featured on Huffington Post. A Dutch filmmaker, Frans Hofmeester,  has been shooting clips of his daughter since she was an infant and produced this time lapse. Very cool!

The shoe’s on the other foot

We had an interesting conversation with our daughter, Writer Princess, over the weekend. Her in-laws were going to be out of town and so her 17-year old sister-in-law, Glenda, was planning on bringing a friend and staying with WP and Son-in-Law on Saturday night. Apparently, Glenda had several options, and the decision to stay with her older brother and his wife was her first choice.

My first question to WP was, “So what is her agenda?”

WP wisely responded, “I don’t know, but I’m sure there is one.”

As the conversation continued, WP made a number of comments like these.

“She probably wants to go somewhere that her parents wouldn’t approve.”

“She probably thinks we’ll be more lenient on her.”

“She got in trouble awhile back because she went to a party or something when she had told her parents she was somewhere else.”

“Her parents don’t really like the group she is running around with.”

Mrs. Poolman and I were busting a gut laughing. If you roll back the clock 11 or 12 years, WP would have been talking about herself. Although I didn’t know my son-in-law at the time, I understand he didn’t exactly spend every Saturday night in the library either. It’s ironic to see the two of them as the rules-enforcers and curfew keepers.

Fortunately, WP also saw the humor in the situation.  I haven’t talked with WP since then. I’m curious how the weekend went.

 

A generous offer

A woman offer me her child at the grocery store yesterday.

It all started as I was walking out of Publix. There was a woman, pushing a cart, and her 18-24 month old daughter in front of me. As the pair went through the sliding door, the little girl started to take off towards the parking lot. “Mom” grabbed her and placed her in the cart’s child-seat. The little girl started to scream in protest.

“Mom” turned towards me and saw I was laughing. I said, “The great escape has been foiled again.” She shrugged and smiled.

I encounted them again a few minutes later, when I returned my cart to the “cart corral.” “Mom” was strapping the little girl into the back seat of her SUV in the space next to the corral. The little girl was still screaming with an impressive amount of energy and vocal range.

“Mom” shut the door and turned towards me, made a face and put both hands over her ears.

“She is very determined,” I said.

“You want her? You can have her — right here and right now. You can have the car and all the groceries too.”

I thought about it for a second, but I really figured that Mrs. Poolman wouldn’t approve.

Maybe I should have considered it more seriously. Her car was much nicer than mine.