Things you don’t want to hear in the hospital
I know there have been a lot of similar lists of strange things said in hospitals and emergency rooms, most of which have been longer and funnier than this one, but this list has one unique feature: these are all things that I actually heard during my most recent hospital stay.
- Your blood count is really funky. This bit of wisdom was uttered by an emergency room doctor (or nurse, I’m not sure because of the morphine I was on at the time). I wanted to tell the guy not to get all technical on me, but note my reference about the morphine. Later, a doctor who had a few more years of experience under his belt explained that I was extremely dehydrated and when you remove a lot of liquid, the concentration of what’s left goes way up.
- I’ve never seen such a bad case of arthritis in someone as young as you are. Do I really need to go into how uplifting and encouraging that is? That’s a nurse who needs to work on her bedside manner, in my not-so-humble opinion.
- My husband wasn’t as interested in computers as I was, so I tended to not spend time with him. He died of leukemia two years ago. OH HOW CHEERFULThat’s just the kind of uplifting and heartwarming story that a guy stuck in a hospital bed wants to hear . . . especially right after being told that his blood count is “funky” and his blood pressure is practically nonexistent. Could you loan me a really sharp knife, please?
- That scar from your heart surgery sure does make it easy to line up the x-ray machine to take chest x-rays. I’m so glad to know that. Really. The only reason I had the surgeon knock me out, slice my chest open, break my sternum, and stop my heart for two hours was just to make your job easier. I’m thinking of having similar scars installed on my back, both arms, and both legs. That should make your job a breeze.
The really wild part is that these comments came from folks at the hospital that I prefer to use. The hospital I used to end up in was actually much worse. I remember a nurse at the old hospital who told me, in not-so-many-words, “If you make me mad I’ll make you regret it” and then she turned the flow regulator on my IV up so high that after about 20 minutes (by which time she’d gone home) my arm felt like someone was running thumbtacks through the IV. That incident was one of the main reasons I switched to the hospital I just finished ranting about in my list. At least the new hospital won’t make an insurance company cancel your term life insurance policy when they find out your under their care!
Technorati Tags: hospital, stupid+comments, gripes, heart+surgery, rheumatoid+arthritis, sarcasm
I agree i might want to hear that as well. so sad to hear there are nurses threat their patient like that. i’ll do the same thing or i’ll report the nurse who will try to scared me.