Hospital Etiquette

Lesson #1 -

It isn't about you.

I went to see my father today.  Yesterday, at about 1:00 p.m., he went to get in his car and felt sick, then realized he could not get back into the house and laid down in the back seat.  A neighbor saw him and came to tell my mom there was something wrong.  He'd had a stroke.

He was transferred to a bigger hospital.  I drove my mom and sister down to see him in the neural critical care unit.  He was somewhat responsive.  He threw up several times.  We asked for a popsicle and that seemed to make him feel better.  He slept and we just kind of talked quietly amongst ourselves and read.

Then, a woman who has only just rekindled a relationship with my mother decided she HAD to come to the hospital.  This is the wife of the brother of my mother's ex-husband.  Yeah.  And when my sister was in the hospital earlier this year, this woman realized she knew my sister, that she remembered her from when my sister was little, and wanted to get back in touch with my family.

Fine.  That's fine.  But now is not the time to try to be the center of attention.  When she called us, we were at the hospital, and when she asked my mother if she could come my mother told her yes.  I was in the background mouthing to my mother to say "no" because my father was not going to want her there right now.  After my mother hung up, she asked my father if it was okay and he said, "As long as she doesn't talk too much."

Enter this woman.  Talking loudly.  Talking about things that we couldn't care less about.  Some girl's wedding.  Some picnic.  Some fight she was having with someone.  LOUDLY.  Her husband sat down in a rolling chair and accidentally went flying, knocking into my father's IV pole.

In the middle of this, my father suddenly said, "I want to be alone."  I knew this would happen.  Then he starting telling the nurse he wanted to sit on the commode, so he could be alone.  The nurse told him he didn't need to sit on the commode because he needed to use the bed pan, but I understood that "the commode" at home would be a place he would escape to where no one would bother him.  So pretty much right after they got there we all had to leave.

Then we got downstairs and I said I was going to go get my car and bring it around because it was on the third floor of the parking garage.  This woman said, "I don't understand why."  I was like, "What part of that is confusing?"  "You can't bring it here."  (At that very moment we were standing near the elevators kind of far from the entrance.)  "By the time I get to the parking garage, get up three flights of stairs, and pay for parking you all will be right there at the entrance and it will be convenient for everyone."  "Well, I just don't understand.  Are you parked in the green garage?  So are we."  "Yes, that's where I'm parked, and I just want to go get the car."  "Well, wait, well, why?"  And at that I just walked away.

BECAUSE I WANT TO AND I'M 34 YEARS OLD.  And because it isn't about you.  And I don't know you.  And because I'm pissed that you upset my father and he asked everyone to leave.

Moral:  Be the help someone needs, not the help YOU want to be.