Adventures in Healthcareland, Part 2

Luckily for me, my roommate is sensitive to pain and groans a lot so the nurses come in to attend to him quite often and check on me in the process. But overnight it's tough to get a good night's sleep, someone's always there to take your temperature or check the IV, the my roomie starts groaning again. His percocet has worn off.

I awake in the morning to more groaning and other noises I can't place so I put in my hearing aid. My IV machine is dinging, a dinging at a high enough pitch that I couldn't hear it before. There's also a woman screeching over and over about being hungry. "I'm hungry. Can I eat please?" "It's time to eat. Can I eat please?" This goes on and on until she seems to break into sobs. No one responds that I can tell, apparently her laments aren't important enough to warrant action. Eventually she gets fed as do the rest of us. I get a liquid diet. I feel slightly hungry, a good sign, but still have a slight fever.

After breakfast my roomie starts in again with his groans, oy.....oy.....oy. At one point the woman was at it at the same time. "I need to go home. Call me a cab so I can go home." "OOY" "I need a cab to go home" "OOY" "Will someone call me a cab" "OOOY" and so on. I was tempted to turn off my hearing aid. But when the TV and phone must be rented, this entertainment comes cheaper.

Later, Phil stopped by to keep me company. We made friends with one of the nurses. She'd been working as a nurse for a while and told us that she'd worked at a posher hospital in Manhattan but found the patients too self-important for her. She liked the neighborhood feeling of this hospital. But she also shared something disturbing. She doesn't get healthcare insurance through her job. Is that amazing or what? A healthcare worker working with sick folks everyday, but doesn't get healthcare insurance for herself. OK, that's it for tonight. I'll try to finish this tomorrow so I can move on to other things. I hope you'll stick with me.