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.

Advertisement

One less thing to worry about

Last night Mrs. Poolman and I spent the night on cots at our church, as overnight hosts for two homeless families. This is part of a program called Interfaith Hospitality Ministry. Our parish take two or three weeks of the year and provides overnight housing, breakfast and dinner for two or three families. Other churches pick up the other weeks.

I didn’t sleep that well, so I’m a little raw today. This will be a short post.

I thought that the reason I didn’t sleep well was the uncomfortable cot and the unfamiliar surroundings. I was wrong. Apparently I was worrying about the new etiquette for gay weddings.  Marlo Thomas has all the answers for me.

I’ll rest easy tonight.

It’s what time?

I have never been one who likes mornings. Getting out of bed is always a chore for me. So I wasn’t all that surprised this morning when my alarm went off at its usual 6:15 am, but it was almost painful for me to pull myself off the pillow. I let the dogs out and went to the bathroom to start the morning routine. Even after taking a shower, I was still dragging bad.

As I got ready to shave, I looked down at my wrist watch on the counter to check my progress. I expected it would be around 6:45 am.  It didn’t look right. I picked it up to make sure I was looking at it right-side-up, but it still didn’t register. So I put on my glasses and looked again. My watch indicated 3:15 am.

WTF???

That’s three and a half hours earlier than it should have been.

I went back into the bedroom. The alarm clock also said 3:15 and the alarm was still turned on.

WTF???

All I can figure out is I must have dreamed the alarm went off. It woke me up and I just assumed it was time to get up. But it was still 3:15 in the morning!

I did the only thing that made sense. I left the alarm clock “on” and crawled back into bed. I was asleep in about 30 seconds.  I awoke when the alarm went off at the real 6:15 and popped out of bed, fresh and ready to greet the day.

Yeah, right.

Bad night

This was a rough morning. I am functioning on about three hours sleep, which is at least four hours less than I need to be on top of the game. It was not a good night.

The first problem was my own darn fault. I had two cans of Pepsi Max during the evening. The caffeine had me awake and alert.  Our dog, “Casey the Lab,” is weather-phobic. Lightning and thunder drive him around the bend. Even heavy rain and winds cause him to have an anxiety attack.  Last night, it wasn’t a major storm, but about the time we went to bed it started raining and the wind picked up. The darn dog would not settle down.  He kept panting loudly and pacing around our bedroom, with his nails making scratching noises on the new floor. Occasionally, he would try to jump up into bed with me. Then the power went off and that made him even crazier. Finally, around 3:30 am,  Mrs. P had had enough of it and went out to the family room to sleep on the couch. She took the big doofus with her.

She is not working today. I hope she can catch up on her lost sleep.

Good football weekend

I headed to Gainesville for the second-to-last home game of the season. It was a non-eventful win over Florida International. Nice chance to see some of the kids who will be playing next year and later.

The view from our seats.

By the end of the game, there were a couple of running backs handling the ball who I have never even heard of. They are probably walk-on seniors and this will be the only chance they will get to actually play some downs in a real game.

Mrs. Poolman stayed home, so I took a couple of my local Gator buddies for a same-day round trip.

Starting early.

It was a good time had by all. With the early kick-off, we were on the road by 5 am, but were home by 8 pm.

We have a new couple who have season tickets to the seats next to us. They are a couple of former Gator cheerleaders. Nice folks. This week, they brought their two girls, ages 7 and 3 with them. Both girls were very well behaved and quite cute.

ZZZZZZZZ!

The three year old arrived tired and grumpy, but slept through the entire first half in her mom’s lap. She slept like a rock througth all the noice and even the cheers. I joked with her mom, that she must be used to hearing them at home. She woke up for the second half and was quite the flirt. Very cute!

It has been a cool and rainy Sunday today. I ran a couple of errands and updated the checkbook. Such excitement. Mrs. P is making shrimp and grits for dinner. If  it turns out as good as I expect, I’ll share it tomorrow.