Hospital Tips, and More

My last few weeks have been occupied by my Mom’s health problems. We moved her into assisted living a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, it went quite well until she had a fall the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. (Past a certain age you don’t “fall,” you “have a fall.”) She cracked a femur. Fortunately my daughter, visiting for Thanksgiving week, was spending the night with her and rode with her in the ambulance to the ER, doing a great job of taking care of everything until Helen and I got there. They did bone repair surgery on the femur, and moved her into post-surgery rehab after that. But now she’s back in the hospital with seizures or fainting spells, or something — they’re still running things down.

But this isn’t about her condition. These are some suggestions based on my experience with numerous patients in numerous hospitals, etc., over many years. I hope you don’t need them, but if you live a long life, or have relatives who do, you probably will. I hope you find them useful.

1. Have a go-bag. No, not a “bug out” bag, but a “hospital bag.” Mine is an old backpack. In it are a laptop with charger (and phone charger, very important), a bunch of snacks, a change of clothes (including something warm because hospitals are usually freezing) an old airline blanket (same reason) and, when I leave the house, my Kindle. There’s a lot of boring down time at hospitals and you have to look after that. I usually stick a couple of bottled waters in the side pockets as water fountains are sometimes hard to come by for some reason. Keep restocking this over time as you go back; you never know when you’ll be there overnight.

2. Following up on the above, an important lesson: Prioritize taking care of yourself. Your patient has a whole hospital devoted to taking care of them (though it will need your supervision — more on that below), but they need you to be functional. You need to keep yourself fed, watered, reasonably rested, and generally together. The modern medical system is too complex, and often disorganized, for a sick person to deal with. They need you to be sufficiently on your game to talk to doctors, nurses, etc. Don’t punish yourself in some sort of solidarity move — it doesn’t help anyone if you’re sick too.