Thoughts on Being in Hospital

After Jake left in the middle of the afternoon yesterday, I went to bed. I slept until 9:30 pm. I just knew that was the end of a good night’s sleep  so I was surprised to find myself sleepy and heading for bed around  1 am. But I slept very well and woke up at 9 am.

What I HATE about being in hospital is the noise. It is not overt banging and laughing and shouting {although there was some of that especially in the small hours } but  what I am calling for want of a better name "machine noise." It is, I suppose, the kind of noise that is just under the edge of hearing, the kind of noise that Fred always said he could feel in his bones. I had no idea until last night what he meant by this. It is the kind of noise that my body seems to be always on the defensive against, the kind of noise that has my shoulders hunched up all the time. Yesterday while I was waiting to go home, odd though it may seem, I could "feel" my bones vibrating against it. It is a feeling that affects not only my body but my mind, my thoughts and my ability to cope.

Long-time readers may remember the time when Fred checked himself out of intensive care after having surgery for colon cancer followed by a heart attack. It was absolutely AMA but he was adamant he HAD to get away. {And he was right–he improved enormously once he was home and felt he had some control over what he could do.} I didn’t reach that point and one reason is I am more compliant to authority than he was,  but yesterday, I could definitely understand how he felt. This morning I feel normal. I caught myself thinking that things were back to normal which led me to think about what is normal for me. I was a bit surprised when I narrowed it down to "no noise" since the dishwasher is chugging away and a couple of kids in their way to the pool are laughing and running outside but these are not noises that I think of as vibrating in my bones. They are normal every-day noises to which I pay brief attention and then they subside into the background.

Well, since I finished the last paragraph, a couple of things occurred. Jake came over because he couldn’t get me on the land line. {My cell phone–the one I vomited on–is dead.  } After some experimentation, he discovered he had the wrong number for my land line  in his cell phone. And I called my older son, Nick, in MS and we had a long talk which was nice.

“That which we persist in doing becomes easier. It is not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

PT:Even the couple of days I spent in the hospital had a bad effect on my ability to walk straight without a cane. I shouldn’t be surprised since I saw the effect of being in hospital had on Fred’s ability to hold his own weight on his legs. I have started back with my leg exercises.