meish dot org: life, unfolding

As some of you may know, I had to go into hospital last week – nothing particularly dramatic, and I’m much better now, but serious enough at the time to warrant 24 hours under observation and on IV medication.

I’ve never been in hospital before – though I’ve obviously visited other people in them, and had the odd outpatients appointment. When I was much, much younger, my somewhat, erm, adventurous approach to play landed me in casualty a few times, but I was always discharged a few hours later, swaddled in bandages or splinted and hopping.

So it was with some surprise that I heard the registrar say “hmm, we think you should be admitted for a bit, so we can keep an eye on things…”

It wasn’t a terrible experience – though IVs hurt, and they don’t tell you that on Grey’s Anatomy – but hospitals are, well, a bit shabby and very, very boring.

In fact at one point, starved of stimulus and interaction with the outside world (and food, though on reflection perhaps that wasn’t such a bad thing), and lying immobile as another round of drugs drip-drip-dripped into my left arm, I found myself pondering how spending a night in an NHS hospital is not dissimilar to spending a night flying club class, on the redeye from the west coast of the US to London.

Ways in which the experiences are similar:

1. There’s not much privacy
2. If you end up next to someone really chatty, they want to talk All. The. Time. and you can’t get away, because there’s nowhere to go.
3. You don’t get a whole lot of choice about where you’re going to be while there. If you don’t like your spot, you can’t really ask them to move you.
4. The bed is too narrow and unfamiliar.
5. There aren’t enough pillows/blankets.
6. You’re unable to control your environment, so are constantly slightly uncomfortable: too hot/too cold etc
7. Sleeping hours constantly filled with mysterious humming, clanking, thrumming and other background noise including doors slamming and the bingbong! of phones ringing
8. There’s a constant undertone of other people snoring, which you can’t do anything about
9. You find it really difficult to get to sleep because of the unfamiliar, uncomfortable and slightly stressful environment
10. …and when you do finally get to sleep, you can only rest fitfully because you keep waking up (or being woken up) periodically during the night
11. …and when you do finally drift off properly, you get woken up about an hour later because the timetable dictates that everyone should be awake at that point.
12. The staff all wear uniforms.
13. You have to try to relax in close proximity to total strangers.
14. The lights on/off at a specific time.
15. Staff come by to check on you every once in a while.
16. The food isn’t what you’d eat at home.
17. Entertainment options are limited to whatever you brought in with you.
18. You’ve got a slight, nagging concern that your ipod/game device battery is going to run out
19. You can’t use your mobile phone.
20. Bathroom facilities are not up to much, and you have to wait your turn, and you are haunted by the overwhelming sense that other people have used it. Recently.
21. You can’t easily wash, and if you want to get changed you have to do it in semi-public or in a cramped washroom cubicle.
22. You can’t step outside for a breath of fresh air.
23. You want to wear slippers all the time, because even though you know they clean things, you are aware that this is a high-volume traffic area – lots and lots and lots of people have passed through this area.
24. There’s a strange smell around – processed air, cleaning products, plastic, foam-rubber…
25. The staff have an outward air of friendliness, though you know that they’re not really in the hospitality industry and that you’re getting in the way of them having an easy life.
26. When you get out, you’re relieved, very tired and in desperate need of a shower.
27. At the time, it’s a pretty miserable experience, but looking back on it after a good night’s sleep, it doesn’t seem too bad.

Ways in which the experiences are different:

• In club class on planes:
  1. You have to wear a seatbelt at all times and carry a passport.
  2. They give you airmiles.
  3. They give you champagne with your meal.
  4. You get a hot towel after dinner.
  5. It costs loads – and if you haven’t booked into club, you might always get upgraded.
  6. The views are pretty good.
  7. Your fellow passengers tend to be fairly well-off and/or business types.
  8. The staff are mostly from the home counties and are tall, tanned and elegant.
  9. There’s always the faint possibility that you might fall out of the sky, crash and become ill, injured or possibly die.
• In an NHS hospital:
  1. You can wear your pyjamas.
  2. They stick needles in you. Frequently.
  3. They take your blood pressure and temperature every two hours.
  4. You have to bring your own towel.
  5. It’s free.
  6. Your view is your fellow patients, who tend to be wrapped in bandages, covered in weeping sores, or coughing up bits of biology.
  7. And you don’t know how well-off they are, or what they do for a living, because they’re all in pyjamas, too.
  8. The staff are mostly from commonwealth countries and are well-meaning but clearly run off their feet.
  9. There’s a very good possibility that if you’re in there, you might already be ill, injured or possibly dying.

More similar than you might have thought.