I'm still here, and pissed!

I spent 20 days in rehab, getting infused every 6 hours with antibiotics.  They stuck a tube up my arm so they wouldn't have to open a new vein every time I got an infusion.  That would have been inconvenient.

Every few hours they pricked my finger to test my blood sugar, which was all over the place because I was sick, for God's sake.  After a while, I told them to knock it off.  My blood sugar was not what I was there for, and I didn't want any more finger sticks.  So they sent a nurse over to inform me that if I developed diabetes Medicare would not pay for insulin.  I managed to bear this news with equanimity.

While I was lying there in my bed of discomfort, I managed to read all the literature the hospital had given me.  It turns out that the hospital treats everybody over a certain age as a fall risk.  This means they put a Whoopie cushion in your bed, under your body, so every time you get up an alarm goes off.  You are supposed to ring for the nurse, who then might come and assist you out of bed.When she gets around to it.  Yes, the Wilmington Hospital treats every older adult admitted for anything like a toddler.  You could be a circus acrobat suffering from a sinus infection and still be humiliated this way.  It's not unpleasant enough to be in the hospital, so they make it worse, for their own convenience.

I think this procedure was invented by lawyers to prevent the hospital from being sued. 

I am angry enough about the lack of cleanliness.  Hand sanitizers and hazmat suits have taken the place of soap and water.  The rooms and bathrooms are never cleaned, nor are the patients washed.  I was in there for 5 days, and I must admit I reeked.  But the hazmat suits protected the staff, and the hell with the patients and visitors.

Florence Nightingale, call your office

I am not dead, contrary to rumor, not even close.

My life, or my health, was saved by doctors and nurses of various local institutions, and I am grateful to them.

However, gratitude is the most short-lived emotion, so I am ready to bitch and moan about cleanliness, or the lack thereof.  I was in the infectious disease ward.  Everyone who came in had to put on a garment like a hazmat suit, even if they only brought a pill or a blanket. But the floor was not cleaned once in four days.  There was something--I won't specify what-- on the floor in the bathroom, which had also not been cleaned.  For a moment I flirted with the possibility of cleaning it up myself, but sanity prevailed, so I told the nurse about it.  She immediately told someone, and a maintenance person was sent up.

The maintenance person said nothing, but every atom of her being bristled with the injustice of the thing.  Her body was eloquent with disapproval.  However, she did clean the floor.

Then I was transferred to a nursing home, where the same standard of cleanliness, or lack thereof, was apparent.  Someone came in with a broom and dustpan to remove whatever had spilled on the floor, if it was the size of a kernel of corn or larger.  The toilet overflowed twice, and someone wiped up the water on the floor, but no soap was applied.

Sanitation is something that interests me, for personal reasons.  My father died because an infected pacemaker was implanted in his body and he could not fight off the infection. So I consider the mop, the broom, and the vacuum cleaner vital to taking care of sick people.