Hospital visit

Turns out you can actually spend time as a patient in the hospital when there is actually nothing wrong with you. This started with an episode that I went to the emergency room for, rather than going to urgent care, because urgent care would have simply sent me to the ER since it involved chest pain. They checked me out and didn’t find anything definitely wrong, but since I am 67, they thought it prudent to do a stress test. If I would have gone home and tried to schedule one, it would have taken a very long time to get in, but if I was kept at the hospital, I could have it done the next morning and go home, either knowing there was actually something wrong or knowing my heart is fine.

I’ll jump here to what you are probably wondering. The results showed there is nothing wrong. My heart functions just fine.

So I played the part of a patient for another 24 hours before I was finally released to resume my normal life.

This is what is good about being in the hospital for 24 hours:

1. I could watch HGTV all day. Not that I did, but I could have.
2. I could finish the book I was reading, which I did.

And this is what is bad about being in the hospital for 24 hours.

1. They come in and take your blood pressure and temperature every two hours. That can get annoying!
2. You practically starve because they put you on no food from midnight until the results are in and they have decided if further action is needed. That happened well after lunch time, and I hadn’t had breakfast. So I was famished by the time we got to Chick-Fil-A for a chicken sandwich and fries at around 2:30 p.m.!
3. But the previous day, they brought me lunch (finally) at 3:00 and then delivered supper at 5:00. Hmmmm… Feast or famine, I guess. (That day I hadn’t had anything from about 8:00 a.m. until that 3:00 lunch.)
4. They draw a lot of blood.
5. There is a lot of noise in the halls, so it is hard to sleep.

The bottom line is that I have a lot more compassion for people who have to spend extended amounts of time in the hospital. Yes, the nurses and aides can be very nice and I suppose they get the meals brought on time, eventually, but the rest of the situation is pretty bleak. And that is without factoring in being sick or injured.

And now we will get to see just how well our Medicare and Medicare Supplemental insurance, that we pay for every month, actually works!