Greg on Hospital Life



Henry Ford Hospital in Wyandotte

 Everyone ends up in the hospital sooner or later. This weekend is my turn. I haven't been admitted to the hospital since I was a child, so this is a new experience.

 I am not really concerned about my health. I want to clear this problem and go home.  More than anything else I am really annoyed at wasting a weekend in this hospital room.

Observations on Hospital Life

1. Wild West - The emergency room had people coming and going. All kinds of people some with trains of hanger-on people with them. There were old and young and severely ill, and me too.

The staff seemed like they had seen it all, and let the people be their own weird selves. I expected a doctor's office experience with more structure -- instead it was the Wild West.

2. Hospital food -- I am at Henry Ford Hospital in Wyandotte. The day before I got here they redid their food service. Instead of regularly bringing identical meals up to each hospital ward, the kitchen waits for the patients to order off the menu. 

I am sure the patients like it better. The kitchen still batches the orders together and sends trays of food upstairs. It is must be more work with a custom system, but the old system probably had tons of special requests anyway.

The hospital menu is pretty fancy. You can get four kinds of eggs for breakfast, seven kinds of cereal, two kinds of yogurt, seven kinds of bread/muffins. For lunch there are four kinds of salad, four kinds of soup, about eighteen entrees and thirteen side-dishes.

I can endorse the Salmon Caesar wrap which left me thinking about how to make this at home -- that is my ultimate complement for restaurant food. Last night's tilapia was excellent too.

The kitchen's ordering department needs help- - maybe it is just opening weekend jitters, but I spent over five minutes on hold trying to get my dinner order placed. What this kitchen needs is a web-page to place the order.

The food in the emergency room was truly bad though: a microwaved hamburger and squished turkey sandwich.

3. TV  -- The free-TV is medical information videos and music channels. To get better TV (and local phone), you need to pay $7 which is charged to your telephone number -- not the hospital bill. Probably to keep the per/day fee down for the insurance company.

I spend the night watching the CARE Channel's nature scenes and sleepy music because of my roommates's ...

4. SNOORING -- My roommate snoores terribly. Eventually I found some earplugs in my bag from my last red-eye flight.  [Ouch he is snooring again.]

5. Hope --  Hope to get out of here soon.

More on hospital living on my next post.