#505. Visiting people at the hospital.
Mar 10th by Jon“The birth of my child was treated with the urgency of an oil change.”
That’s a line from the two page manifesto I wrote on the “how was your stay at our hospital” exit form I was given after my oldest daughter was born. It was a bad experience and words are really all I have. I’m not a physically intimidating person. Ask Donnie from the fifth grade. He used to show me the scars on his hands he had from punching kids with braces, like me. Then he would throw my school bag under the rear tires of the bus when we got dropped off. (It’s possible that he unwittingly invented the idea of “throwing someone under the bus.”)
At the time, the only words I had were, “Aww man! Come on Donnie!” But now that I am an adult, despite the regular grammatical errors people point out, I have an ocean of adjectives to throw. Which is what I did after my wife almost had our first child in the lobby of the hospital. Every other couple in the lobby with us was hours if not days away from delivering and were kind of cuddling with each other and saying things like, “It’s almost time, our little guy will be here soon.” I was doing breathing techniques while my wife threw up and yelled a whole bunch and tried to separate my right arm from my body and beat me about the head, neck and back area with it. Meanwhile the male nurse in the lobby surfed the Internet.
When we were finally seen, the doctors were horrified we had been forced to wait in the lobby so long and the whole thing turned into an emergency situation. Needless to say, I went a bit crazy on the satisfaction survey.
This week, we’ll probably be going back to the hospital. Not to have a baby, but to visit a couple in our small group that is about to have their first kid. And although I’d like to think I matured a little in the last 5 years, I still feel really ill prepared for the whole “visit people you know in the hospital” thing. And it’s not like that’s a uniquely Christian thing to do, but as a Christian, I think we’re called to do it often, especially if you’re involved in Sunday School and Awanas and a small group and a men’s group and a church softball league and … someone is always going to be in the hospital for you to visit.
But since I’m so bad at hospital visits I don’t really feel qualified to tell you what to do. Instead I thought I would tell you three things I’ve learned not to do:
1. Don’t make the whole visit about getting free magazines.
I love magazines. I confessed that a few Saturdays ago on this site. And Northside Hospital in Atlanta has a room where you can just take as many magazines as you want. I’m not sure if you’re supposed to keep them or not, but the sign says “Free magazines” so I treated them as such. When we had our daughter McRae, I came home with a 7 pound baby and 12 pounds of free magazines. If you go to visit someone in the hospital don’t ask them where the magazine room is. They’re sick or injured or tired. You’ll need to figure out where that magical room is on your own.
2. Resist the urge to unfold the chair that turns into a bed.
When you have a kid, your wife will be put into a bed that is roughly the size of an aircraft carrier with buttons and levers and 37 kinds of awesome massagers. As a dad you will get to sleep on a chair that unfolds into a cot. Completely unfair, I know. When you go to visit a friend in the hospital, resist the temptation to play with that foldout chair/bed. You will want to unfold it because it looks like some sort of furniture transformer. It will be tempting to say “more than meets the eye” and then try to have it battle other furniture in the room while making pssww pswww laser sounds with your mouth in a struggle for world dominance. But if a friend just had their kidney removed they probably don’t want to see your furniture transformer movie.
3. Don’t climb into the ceiling.
Make sure that you don’t find a way to crawl inside the ceiling and pop a panel out over the person’s bed to surprise them. I can’t say that one enough. A family friend named Randall did that once. He worked at the hospital and a member of his church was in for a few days. He thought it would be funny if he climbed inside the duct work, pushed a panel out of the ceiling and popped his head out directly over the top of the hospital bed and yelled, “surprise!” Turns out hospital ceilings are not weight tested at “Randall level” and he ended up falling through into the room. Fortunately for him, it was a short ride to the hospital.
Those are my “don’t tips” for hospital visits. If I ever come see you, I’ll try to be funny and remind you that laughter is the best medicine. You in turn should have some written directions to the magazine room for me. That’s win-win right there.
What’s your best or worst hospital visit tip?
Comments
how about a post about faith-based tattoos??
That story of the guy who fell through the ceiling is hilarious! I hope his friend wasn’t in for a heart condition though? That would be a worry.
I don’t know whether to be horrified or jealous that hospitals have rooms with free magazines – that sounds like my idea of heaven but then I thin it’s also a huge waste of money and I’m glad I live in a country with a public health system where our magazines are from twenty years ago.
When I was in hospital for female related surgery three years ago a guy friend from Church came to visit me. Which was lovely as no one else did. But I think he may have liked me at the time and I don’t really think I was looking or feeling my best! They gave me some strong narcotic type medication while he was there and then came back to check if I was hallucinating. I asked him if I was and his reply was “do I look like Brad Pitt” and replied “No, more’s the pity” and was pronounced fine.
Funnily enough, after seeing me in that state a relationship never got off the ground…
So my tip about visiting people from church in hospital? Don’t visit a girl you might like when she’s high as a kite, wearing mesh panty thingys’ and a backless gown and feeling like someone put a blowtorch inside of her…
Oh and on a serious note – if you are visiting someone with reduced immunity – do NOT go if you are sick. My father was at high risk of getting pnuemonia even from a little cough after he had a serious accident and I couldn’t believe how many people just had no consideration for his health and would see him when they were sick. They could have literally killed him!
Having spent 10 days a month in-patient, for 10 months at a children’s hospital with my daughter, I have all sorts of “don’ts” for visitors:
-Don’t come into the hospital room having to pee. We’re all nested in and are drying our underwear in the sink, and as my pastor or deacon or small group leader, I don’t want you seeing that business. Use the bathroom in the hall.
-If we’re in the playroom with a ticked off sick child who just needs a few minutes out of her room, don’t come in and want to lay hands on her and pray. She wants the dress up closet and the art station…not you.
-Snacks and cards are so appreciated. But not toys, flowers, etc. We have to haul that crap to the car, then into the house and then find a place to store it away.
-Don’t come if you’re sick. I thought that’d be common sense. I’m wrong. Some people you visit might be immuno-suppressed and you’re cheerful visit might kill them. No thanks.
-Don’t bring your kids if they are the heathenistic kind who might push a code blue button, step on an IV line, whine about being bored in loud tones so everyone on the floor is aware of their dissatisfaction..because that crap is contagious and then my kid catches the whines. No bueno.
-If we haven’t had a conversation before, the hospital room is not the place to have our first meeting. Seriously. I appreciate your prayers, a call, a card, but I don’t know you and you coming to see us in our little bitty room is the epitomy of “awkward turtle”
-Oh yeah, call ahead. We may be getting ready to nap, eat dinner in peace, watch a movie, etc, and don’t want to be bugged. You know, kind of like when we’re at home
Funny post Jon! I wish I’d saved some of my complaint survey’s to our daughter’s hospital. We could collaborate, get a big name writer to attach their name to the book (I’m thinking Barna, maybe McLaren) and hit the Bestseller list by Christmas…
I laughed out loud, as usual.
When we had our second baby, we were assigned to a post-partum suite–it was two rooms that had been converted into one, connected by french doors. It had extra sofas, a small table and a kitchenette in the extra room. It was amazing.
So when our small group leader (a bachelor friend of ours) suggested holding the weekly meeting at the hospital 30 hours after our son was born, we happily agreed. We hosted about a dozen of our friends, and it was a blast!
My worst hospital trip was when I went to the Emergency Room after I hit my head on a clients hoyer lift. My head was pounding and I felt nautious and I asked the nurse for a tylenol. She said she had to ask the doctor. 45 minutes later another nurse told me I could go home. No tylenol, no nothing!
At that same hospital a year earlier I was in the ER due to an infection. The nurse who was drawing my blood had a class full of students with her. She could not find my veins and kept prodding in the wrong places. I am dealthly afraid of needles and she had no sensitivity to this. She told my husband “I’ll just have to come back and try later.” She did 10 minutes later with another nurse who found the right vein and got it done in an efficent manner.
When I had my second son, I needed an IV. I am terrified of needles, so I looked the other way while the nurses poked around my arm for a vein. But they found an artery instead, and I heard the nurses exclaim about the blood spurting out all over. One suggested it was “Texas Chainsaw IV”
Funny thing is I am reading this post while lying in a hospital bed waiting to have a major surgery on Thursday.
There are very few people who I really want to visit me in the hospital. My wife, my kids, my pastor. The rest can really just stay home and pray for me and send chocolate. (I’m not really supposed to have chocolate for a few days, but I can stockpile it for later)
I find it a little funny that the same people who have never dropped by to sit a spell on the porch at home when I’m healthy, feel it necessary to go out of their way to see me weak and unable to defend myself in the hospital.
I’d like to meet Randall.
My mom was diagnosed with cancer at 72 and was in the hospital for her first round of chemo. Our church is multi-site but the campus we attend was pastored by a man in his late 20′s, bald head and piercings. When he came into mom’s room to visit, he was laughing because the ladies at the nurses station had a hard time believing he was our pastor. I still laugh at this whenever I think of it. And I’ll tell you this, for someone so young, he knew exactly what to say to my mom, how long to stay and how to comfort all of us. He is the best!
My best and worst visit were one in the same, but needs a little bit of background. Back in 2003, my husband and I lost a baby in utero. I had to give birth to our stillborn son and stayed on the maternity floor.
About a year later came the visit I mentioned. A couple at the church where I worked had a baby, at the same hospital where I had given birth. I walked there with the pastor (our church was literally around the corner) and met their son on his first day out in the world. What a beautiful thing to witness!
While I was there, sad memories came back to me. But there was joy in this new life, even as I grieved what we had lost. God does work healing through these things, though. I was blessed to be a part of that joyous event in their lives.
Paul Maurice Martin
Wow I don’t know what else to say!
Jon
Sabrina
“I’d like to say this happened when we were kids, but it happened about a month ago. I’m 32 and my brother is 28.”
I am imagining a 32 year old woman with a bed pan on her head. (Which is exactly the kind of sentence I anticipated writing today).
Jon
Marni –
everyone of these rules were funnier than the ones I wrote. Especially the “awkward turtle”
Jon
When I had cancer, well, there are lots of fab stories. Here a couple to brighten your day.
Almost the first thing that happened to me was the placement of a Broviac catheter. It’s basically a big giant IV that starts in your jugular and exits between your breasts. It’s good because they use it to draw blood (don’t have to stick me 34972034890 times a day) and to administer chemo (dilute the chemicals right away with all the blood in the jugular, instead of burning a hole in my wrist). So, but when mine got put in (a surgical procedure), it somehow managed to get a “kink” in the line, and while you could put stuff in, you couldn’t get blood out. I was 10 at the time, and had been promised that they would stop sticking me once the Broviac was in. So, needless to say, I was not thrilled about this. So, we scheduled a same-day surgery to go in and yank the kink out, because a couple well-meaning doctors and nurses had tried to gently tug on the thing, to no avail and much pain. Then, on the day of the scheduled procedure, a nurses aide who I already didn’t like, came in to do something with the IV – I don’t remember what. What I do remember is that she STEPPED ON THE FREAKING IV LINE. Imagine having an IV held in place between your boobs by a couple stitches and a pretty intense scab forcefully yanked from your body with about two feet of IV cord as leverage. I screamed, she panicked, my dad leapt out of the transformer chair, and two other nurses came running in. It was drama, I tell you. We could have been on ER. Anyway…long story short, or not, the yanking was enough to straighten out the kink in the line so that I didnt’ end up having to go in that day and have the surgery to fix it. Ironically enough, that woman was never assigned to me again. I wonder why.
Then one night, we were up waiting for some information to come from the latest set of xrays, when a nurse came in and announced to us that Radiology seemed to have lost the xrays and they would have to retake them. My mom was, at the time, on a kick about how much radiation I was getting from all the xrays, CT scans, MRIs, etc…, and was determined there would be no more xrays simply because someone had lost the other ones. So in sweatpants and slippers, at midnight, she stormed down to the Radiology department and unleashed a whopping load of motherly fury on an unsuspecting lieutenant just hoping for a quiet night shift. By morning, the xrays had been found. Moral of the story: don’t mess with my mom.
As a newbie pastor-in-training, I went on a hospital visit with my senior pastor to see an elderly gentleman admitted with severe prostate problems. In the middle of a conversation about mystery hospital food and backless gowns, said gentleman suddenly asked, “Wanna see?” as he whipped his blanket off at the speed of light!
Yes. There REALLY is such a thing as too mush authenticity!
wv: kidiones- Forget the adult pj’s, I want the kidiones with feet!
Funny you mention crawling into the ceiling ‘cuz that happened on last night’s episode of “24″ – except the surprise was murder.
I suddenly feel disadvantaged because I didn’t know that Northside had a free magazine room. Next visit…
I rarely find myself laughing at things on the internet. But I truly ‘lol’ed at this post.
Thanks!
Ok now that I’m over myself- here’s funny stories from the inside….
I am walking into the ER and there is a huge man in 4 point leather restraints – totally whacked out on cocaine. Not unusual but this guy is STANDING and has the cot on his back and is using it as a weapon while the tiny security guards try to jump on the top and weigh it down to get the guy flat again. I walk by and say “My money’s on the dude”.
I also worked neuro ICU. Lots of young angry (normal when your brain swells) men. When the neuro surgeons rounded you would hear “Show me 2 fingers!” Pause giggle “Now show me 2 fingers on the SAME hand!” You know the chief neurosurgeon just got flipped off. Great way to start a fun day.
My husband used to be a resp. therapist and walked in on a couple having sex (except she was quadriplegic and on a vent) He left and told the nurses.
It amazes me how people who have tattoos are terrified of needles…
We heard buzzing intermittently in trauma bay 1 in a victim. Everyone thought it was their pagers. Xray revealed a vibrator lodged in the patient…still on. Bad day to be an intern. Someday I’ll have to tell you Univ. of Cincinnati Er’s top 10 complaints…
This is less about visitors and more about what hospital staff should not do.
About a year and a half ago I had a total thyroidectomy. As with every medical procedure, the hospital wanted to know what, if any, allergies I had. So I listed them on the form prior to coming to the hospital: yeast, eggs, mustard, cranberry. The last two weren’t so important, but the yeast and eggs show up in medicines on occasion.
In the preop, I verbally told the medical staff there about the allergies: still the same. They dutifully listed them in my chart and on a board.
So for supper, still groggy from the great umbrella drink I’d had earlier in the day, I was given spicy soup and a crusty French roll. Keep in mind that I had just had surgery on my throat and felt like my head was on a stick. Even if I had felt like eating, there’s no way I could have gotten those down.
The next morning for breakfast, quite hungry, I lifted up the cover on the tray to find: scrambled eggs, toast, and cranberry juice!
I didn’t get a really cool survey to fill out like you did, Jon. But I did get a phone call wanting to ask my about my stay.
Poor guy. He got an earful.
Another important rule:
Don’t make eye contact with any bags of fluid hanging off the side of the bed. And whatever you do, don’t reach out, squeeze the bag, and say, “Hey- what’s in here?!”
It just makes for very uncomfortable conversation. And an overwhelming urge to scrub your hands raw.
Stephanie, I am sorry your baby died. My first daughter was stillborn. By your comment you showed the goodness of God because you were able to rejoice with others over new life. I now have a non profit that ministers to those who have lost a baby and women without Christ usually never find peace again. It is sad. If you want, email me and I will put your baby's name on the teddy bears I give to moms who lose a baby. Grace & Peace, daphne
Ok, I haven’t read everything, but my experience with my first was very good until the family in the room next door had visitors. I think it was the woman who just had a baby’s toddler that was visiting, but she was going nuts. Each time I would get my daughter to sleep or try to feed her seemed to be the next show time. Screaming fits and crying and yelling and everything in between.
So, my advice is to keep your kids quiet, if you must bring them. I had some visit me that did very well, but if you have a ‘terrible 2′ it might be best to leave them at home in order to not disturb others. Or at least not keep them there for extended periods of time.
My wife is in the hospital right now (not having a baby). I lived point number two last night. It was 10 p.m. and dark outside. Since we didn’t have the window seat, it was too dark when I tried to figure out the fold-out chair/cot.
The foot part was easy enough. There was a handle that just had this “pull me” look to it. Out came a drawer with a pull-up cushion. But, what about the back rest (or top third of the “cot?” There weren’t any instructions, and in the dark I couldn’t figure it out.
I tried sleeping on the thing, and it was comfortable for all of five minutes. Fortunatlely, an interruptive nurse came in around midnight and I immediately asked her to show me how it worked. Viola! Instant chair/cot with protective arms to keep you from falling off.
But, then I had to maneuver the thing into position next to my wife’s “aircraft carrier” of a bed, and climb onto the chair/cot. But, only an hour later, and here came the nursing brigade to wake everyone in the room for the nightly vampire session.
More than meets the eye…indeed.
My tip would have to be to try not to visit people when they're 7cm in labor. One of the pastor's at my church, only trying to do good & do his duty, came into the hospital room while I was at like 7cm in labor; no medicine, mind you; and asked if he could pray with me. Of course I grimaced and bore through it & don't know to this day what he prayed. I think he could have prayed for a faster delivery b/c it still took hours to get that 10lb baby out!
your daughter’s name is McRae? sweet!
there’s a boulevard in our city named McRae, so she’s in good company with the people of the great city of El Paso, Texas =)
Yeah, the birth of my one (and only, probably because of the hospital thing) child was the worst thing ever. When we decided on the hospital, they showed us the extremely luxurious labor and delivery room, then patently failed to mention that the recovery room would be semi-private (read: not private at all).
My first roommate had a baby with colic whom she wanted with her all of the time. When she finally left, a lady with a LARGE extended family who stayed with her the whole time came in. I’d be trying awkwardly to figure out how to feed my baby (of course, exposing myself quite often in my amatuer efforts) when three adult men would come in. My bed was right by the door. Her bed was right by the restroom door, which meant that I needed to traipse through a party of about eighteen people to go to the toilet. For a giant mob of people, they were surprisingly silent, and I had to sing, turn on the faucet, and make all kinds of racket in there so that they wouldn’t hear my business. Not to mention the fact that it’s almost impossible to be modest post-delivery, anyway, and I’d get into the restroom to find that I was either exposed or worse stuff I won’t describe here.
Eventually, I resorted to deception to get out of the hospital. My child’s pediatrician wouldn’t release us until she had “evacuated” in the liquid format. I finally took that little cleansing bottle they give you and squirted it into her diaper so we could get the heck out of that prison. Ugh.
Wow! Climbing into the ceiling to surprise the bed-ridden patient! That’s epic win!