I am learning a lot about the hospital secret clubhouse, and a little about the secret society of doctors and nurses. I am learning some of the ins and outs of the system - where I may perchance feel like a responsible adult who is capable of processing and handling information without a physician present. More often I am learning the subtleties of being on a circulating schedule of physical exams and test. These information tidbits will never make it into a game of trivial pursuit.
I am learning that your arrival time includes 30 minutes to get through the admitting department. That if you call before you arrive and go through the monotonous repetitive system update of your 30 day old information over the phone, you can go right to the Express desk and usually be all processed in less than 10 minutes. I have learned not to schedule an appointment on the day after a Monday holiday and if you do, to be prepared to wait on all accounts. While waiting for registrations, I have learned that neighbors do good deeds by delivering neighbors to the hospital, but that beneficiary neighbor, a physically challenged aged man that I’m sure deserves some degree of respect and considerate care may be left there from 8am to 4pm with no company, no money, and no direction other than to wait because the neighbor has to work and the hospital hasn’t planned a bed for him until later in the day. I learned, only because I asked, that the hospital can provide meal tickets in these instances IF someone lets them know. From this I assume that the person doing the admitting may not be privy or paying close enough attention to the circumstances to pick this up on their own. It remains a mystery why they cannot provide a temporary room more fitting of the comfort level this man needed rather than leaving him alone in the hospital waiting area before being admitted. Even a volunteer companion might have been offered and perhaps appreciated.
I learned that official red tape happens when someone previously mis-enters the African name of a beautiful woman with a small child to be admitted. Although the error was apparent and the patient African woman spelled her name in perfectly understandable English, the correction was complicated. The advocate repeatedly stated the need for expediency because of other critical appointments - unsuccessful in speeding the process. They were having the same conversation when I arrived and the same continued when I left 20 minutes later.
I learned that there is no shortage of blue plastic hospital cards on which to print your hospital id. I learned that some people that work there no longer remember that the cards used to be purple and that you used to have a different card for each of the current units of the hospital. It’s ironic that this immaterial thing is such a critical and integral part of your information record and of tracking and processing you through all your interactions with the hospital would be so easily and often lost or forgotten and necessary to recreate. I suppose that is the elegance in the simplicity of recreating it so easily, but couldn’t a new system save billions of dollars in plastic?
Speaking of old cards, one of these old units used to be called the Desgosbriand. Since then it has had a couple of other names. UHC being one of them. If you call the building by it’s old name, you can almost tell how long someone has been working at the hospital and/or how long they have lived in the area by their response. People new to the area don’t recognize the name at all. People new since the inception of FAHC or sensitive and protective of FAHC get defensive and say that it’s all FAHC. Old-timers just breeze on by the reference. Hey I was born in the Degosbriand building and I warmed the cots of the emergency room there more than once. I have the right to that history so I continue to use the old names just for that sake.
I’ve learned that sometimes the person at admitting thinks they know more than you about who requested your tests than you do. I learned that they did not judge themselves worthy of changing the requesting physicians name, even though I explained the name there was my rheumatologist and she wasn’t involved in any of this at all. I am told by some that you can request they send you a copy, but I have had little success with this. It may be an urban legend. From this same event, I also learned that the Radiology desk can update this information for you if they want to and will. Logic made more sense up there that day then down in the lobby. Although they don’t trust you at Radiology admitting to know how many liters of barium you need. I still say it out loud just to be right. A part of me just can’t cope with being denied the right to be an intelligent aware individual and not just an insurance risk.
I am learning that it takes 45 minutes from the time I start to drink barium to the time my body starts to eliminate it. That the first liter is manageable and half of the second is ok. It’s the last cup and a half that gets me. And while it seems like the whole mess could be downed in much less than 60-90 minutes, that it really would be disgusting and perhaps physically rejected were I to try to achieve this task in less time. The task is not as bad as I might have imagined, but even artificial banana smoothie flavoring has an appreciated place of honor in this distasteful requirement.
I’ve learned by listening and small conversations with people waiting that there is almost always someone waiting who has more serious concerns than me. That sometimes I hesitate to ask because the answers are sad sometimes and I don’t know what to say to a sad stranger. I learned that I need to be able to tell some version of my own story when I am asked; at least enough to satisfy the question of a stranger. Even odder sometimes to tell the hospital staff.
I’ve learned that drinking barium gives you an instant connection and conversation point with almost anyone else drinking barium or who has drank the stuff before. I’ve learned that it’s satisfying to throw away the first empty liter, great to throw away the second empty liter and glorious to throw away the empty styrofoam cup. I am considering a coffee cup wall with personal cups for those of us who go there repeatedly. Unfortunate that people would dis-respect this personal space even in a hospital.
I learned not to assume that the bathroom in the women’s dressing room will be available or cleanly usable. It’s good to know where the next 2 closest bathrooms are that you can get to quickly. I learned that it’s much nicer in the women’s dressing room but I haven’t learned to trust that they will look for me in there when it’s my time if I am not in the public waiting room. I learned that they tell you they aren’t responsible for lost or stolen personal items, but they don’t provide you locks for the lockers like they do at the Fanny Allen ‘unit’. I learned that the Women’s dressing room may be entered by a male nurse. I did not learn yet if I feel ok about this or not.
I am learning what clothes to wear for which tests so that I don’t have to dress in the faded johnnies with the ties that always appear unmatched. How humbling to be a slave to the fashion of cold winter nudity under ill-fitting johnnies above feet still warm in black socks and winter boots - the gap bridged by goose bumped winter white legs and your pocket book slung over your shoulders which are cured forward for warmth and to provide some sort of visual barrier for your cold and braless breasts. Only here do I hope that I have anoninimity in numbers and remain a faceless hospital garbed patient as I travel between the women’s changing room and the ct scan staging room.
I learned that getting a catheter to draw blood and then using the same catheter to inject iodine is not considered efficient even though it means less needle pricks for me and I am getting the catheter in the same hospital building. I have yet to learn the reasoning or explanation behind this. The more I explore the more I expect that this is some sort of standard unwritten practice that is not really necessary. I learned that they can only give you one injection of iodine in a day. That I cannot recognize the feel of blood from another liquid on my arm if I cannot see it. I learned a good appreciation for iv good nurses. I learned that you aren’t supposed to move after the test is done in case they need to retake that. I learned that the radiologist there likely doesn’t know your case and is entirely capable of stupid questions like - have you ever been diagnosed with cancer and that the question comes from a intermediary technician and not the radiologist themselves even when you can see them behind the little protective window.
I learned that I can make it home afterwards but it’s reassuring to know where all the bathrooms are that have the least bit of privacy.
I am learning that medical records and the film library will give you whatever information they have on file for you, as long as you can present a photo id. It’s rather ironic to produce an external physical picture to get a picture of your internal physical self. I learned that most doctor’s offices will still tell you you need to get the information through them and not directly.
I am learning that even the receptionist at the doctor’s office thinks she knows more about what I need and mis-interprets my specific message rather than doing what I asked for - which was in the end after 4 phone calls what happened.
I learned that I cannot make heads or tails out of a CT scan. As interesting as they are, they are essentially not understandable to me. I learned that on one of the cat scan pictures on my charts is an x-ray nudie of me. The outside of my skin looking like an outline skin that it is and the inside looking like the guts that it is. There’s something right about this and something wrong. Luckily I was in a public place using the x-ray lights and looking at my picture on the big panel when I came to realize what the bottom picture was. Not much left to the imagination!!! What numbness these people must feel. That I as patient become commonplace. One repeated case after another just like me. But that truly is not the case and I must persist in reminding them of that. Until then I take small comfort in being an anonymous nudie in a vast collection of other anonymous nudies.
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