Hospital PTSD

I recently spent a month in the hospital across four separate visits (nothing serious, more like course-correcting my system after too much chemo had screwed it up) and I am still recovering from it several days later because the experience was so bad it gave me Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I fear that the next time I need to go to the hospital my father is going to have to hit me over the head with a bat Flintstones style to get me there. You laugh but just wait, he'll fireman carry my unconscious ass to his Suburban.

What was so bad that I'm claiming PTSD now that I'm safe at home? Here are a few reasons. 

Waking me up at 4:30 in the morning to weigh me, which is almost as bad as the time they woke me up at two in the morning for a pregnancy test. Please note I have uterine cancer and no periods. 

Did you know a hospital is only authorized to give you a cough drop every two hours? Considering that seemed to be the only thing that made my nasty pneumonia cough shut the fuck up.

They take your vitals every three hours even if you're asleep. This includes a blood pressure cuff that strangles the blood out of your arm and jolting your mouth open with a thermometer.

They had one of my bipolar meds wrong so it came in liquid format rather than the standard pill (WTF, what adult prefers liquid that tastes like feet?). I tried to get them to switch the medication three times and they ignored me every time, which meant twice a day I had to drink four little servings of cherry flavored liquid butt and try not to hurl all over myself. And the nurse stands there and watches you take them so you can't even throw them out.

I generally avoided peeing for as long as possible because I was hooked up to both an IV and oxygen (which was only three meters long and just baaaaarely reached the toilet), plus my gown always tried to fall in the toilet bowl. I thought holding it in was a good call until doing so gave me a UTI that required antibiotics and the doctor chewed me out about avoiding infections.

As someone who is highly medicated, it is important that I take my meds every day at 10 am and 10 pm in order to keep my ass out of the psych ward. Plus I have sleeping problems and if I don't get my pill for that it takes me two or two and a half hours to fall asleep. They seemed to think that a five hour window was acceptable for dispensing drugs no matter my protests. Don't they know not to fuck with anyone who's legit on antipsychotics?

I'm not sure what to call them, but I have sore spots all up and down my thighs and butt from lying down so much the last month. The doctor said it helps if you get up and walk around but what the hell are you supposed to do when you can't walk? Which was the reason I was in the hospital the last time. [Don't worry, my legs are working again, albeit at only 65%.]

The best part about the hospital is the neon yellow slip-resistant socks they force all patients to wear to avoid falling on the way to the bathroom. Nothing screams hospital to me more than that--which is exactly why I made it the header on my Kiss My Chemo dot Blogspot dot com blog. My mother, who hates throwing anything away, always squirrels these socks away so there are now five pair taking up space in my dresser where there was once pretty lacy underwear (so so very long ago).

My nurse found it ideal to teach another nurse how to change the dressing on my mediport at 2 am. Why why WHY must so many tasks happen between midnight and six in the morning? They're lucky they didn't get a fork in the eyeball in defense of sleeping through the night.

Food: all the meat came out greyish beige aka griege, the color of things Morticia must prepare for her little haunted family of in-laws. Surprisingly some of it tasted better than it looked, but still.

After the first hospitalization I figured out how to sweet talk my mother into picking up take-out for me from Panera on her way to visit every afternoon except now that has backfired because I associate Panera with the hospital and it turns my stomach even though the food is the exact same it was a month ago. It's the hospital PTSD at work. It's ruined so many things.

Doctors, teams of the important doctors come into the room from 5-8am and wake you up then tell you a ton of vital information about your diagnosis and status then leave before you're awake enough to have any questions other than do you know what fucking time it is you asshats. Then you wonder if you dreamed them up because they said you have a blood clot in your heart and isn't that REALLY BAD but no one seemed at all concerned about it so then yeah it definitely must have been a dream. Right? This was also how I got told I have a blood clot in my lung as well as a tumor growing on the base of my neck, all of which I had to ask the doctors about again later to make sure I hadn't imagined it. [Nope, all real.]

Three of my doctors looked exactly alike with their covid masks on--tall thirtysomething women with willowy builds, dark hair pulled back, and thick nerd glasses. They were a hematologist, oncologist, and gynecological oncologist, all of whom told me different things and were varying degrees from resident to fellow so I never knew which one of whom to direct my particular questions to. Eventually I was able to identify them by stethoscope: one had a tiny bling clip, one was blue, and one was plain. No wonder I could barely tell them apart.

There are the weird things I now feel gratitude for that I never would have thought about otherwise, like cereal, vending machines, sleeping on a flat surface, and being able to get ice water for myself. Eating upright is a big one, because by day six I had a visible trail of food from the tray on the nifty lap table up my gown to my mouth, like an overgrown two year old who refuses to eat her food delivered by the choo-choo train spoon. 

A positive to come out of all of this is that I now know the exact schedule for the Food Network, HGTV, Comedy Channel and BBC America (Bones and Star Trek: The Next Generation!). 

I think the biggest change I've made since my run of hospital stays is that I no longer despise Guy Fieri on the Food Network. He was there for me during a very dark time, and I will always appreciate that, even if my hospital food never looked nearly as good as what was cooked on Guy's Grocery Games.