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elfsWhile I was hospitalized with COVID, the good thing about the hospital was the immediate staff, the people I saw every day. Most of the nurses were cheerful, kind, and competent; a few were of the brusque variety, and the only one about whom I have questions was somehow the white guy.
The white guy was my second nurse, the one on my floor Thursday night. I asked for some earplugs and he said, “I don’t think we have any of those.” I was disappointed, but soon thereafter Omaha showed up with my custom-fitted ones and I managed to get some sleep despite the very loud HVAC system. I say he was a disappointment because the next night one of the nurses saw I was using a t-shirt as a sleep mask and brought me a little bags with earplugs and a real sleep mask. I asked where she got them from, and she said, “Oh, we keep these in a cabinet.” I said to her, "Good. Could you please tell Ian* where they are because he said you didn’t have any."
I had to take sponge baths, which could be humiliating for someone with more body shame than I have, but the nurses and I worked to maintain our respective dignities. One nurse said, “It’s fine,” but I said I didn’t want to be abusive or a creep because nurses, like hotel housekeepers, get way too much of those. “You’re fine, you’re not of those,” she said. “I can tell.” I’m glad she can; some days, I’m not sure I can.
The attending doctor and trauma surgeon need to up their communication game a bit because neither was very clear on whose responsibility it was to discharge me toward the end; it turned out both of them had to sign, and that was efficient enough.
Overall, every nurse was a goddamn saint. They all deserve to be canonized, but more than that, they deserve to be paid a hell of a lot more, and they deserve better hours, and they deserve more support.
Hospitals like this must be a nightmare for white supremacists. The vast majority of the staff are POC. The CAT scan guy was Nicaraguan, my oral surgeon was Ethiopian, my admitting nurse was Jamaican (and really cute!), and the rest of the staff was almost entirely POCs. The other physicians, the attending and trauma docs, were white; funny how only the Ethiopian one seemed to care about my well-being, the rest treated me like a component on an assembly line.
And, y’know, the food wasn’t that bad at all. People mythologize how bad hospital food is. My one deserved complaint is that it was loaded with too much sugar. Every tray had jello, fruit juice and soda. By the time my side table had three ginger ales on it, one nurse said, “You don’t want the soda pop?” I said, “I’m a savory fellow. Please bring me more hot tea and hot broth.” And blissfully, she brought me a lot more tea. Lipton, but I was in no place to complain; it was tea, dammit, and that meant I would survive.
I did learn never to try eating an orange off the rind when you have a lacerated lip. Ouch! And I bet every time Julia Child was due to be hospitalized she snuck a small bottle of salt in her purse.
So the people were great. The policies… not so much.
“Skipping doses or starting and stopping an antiviral medicine can allow a virus to change/adapt so that the antiviral is no longer effective. This is antiviral resistance.”
First and most egregious stupidity of all: after taking three doses of Paxlovid (night, morning, night), they confiscated the rest of the box and didn’t let me have more. You do not interrupt a course of antivirals! Do you want nastier variants? Because that’s how you fucking get nastier variants! It’s just the same as with antibiotics!
You know what they gave me instead? Vitamin C and Zinc. That was their “Covid prophylaxis protocol.” Vitamin C and Zinc. I was in the friggin’ dark ages.
The selections on the TV were terrible, with far too many religious shows.
And the hospital is already breaking down, with the halls filled with patients who have no beds, beds that are well past their lifetimes and don’t work well anymore, patchwork plumbing and HVAC. If that’s more representative of hospitals elsewhere in this country, I’m very afraid of what the next decade will bring in healthcare.
* Any names changed to protect the various.
The white guy was my second nurse, the one on my floor Thursday night. I asked for some earplugs and he said, “I don’t think we have any of those.” I was disappointed, but soon thereafter Omaha showed up with my custom-fitted ones and I managed to get some sleep despite the very loud HVAC system. I say he was a disappointment because the next night one of the nurses saw I was using a t-shirt as a sleep mask and brought me a little bags with earplugs and a real sleep mask. I asked where she got them from, and she said, “Oh, we keep these in a cabinet.” I said to her, "Good. Could you please tell Ian* where they are because he said you didn’t have any."
I had to take sponge baths, which could be humiliating for someone with more body shame than I have, but the nurses and I worked to maintain our respective dignities. One nurse said, “It’s fine,” but I said I didn’t want to be abusive or a creep because nurses, like hotel housekeepers, get way too much of those. “You’re fine, you’re not of those,” she said. “I can tell.” I’m glad she can; some days, I’m not sure I can.
The attending doctor and trauma surgeon need to up their communication game a bit because neither was very clear on whose responsibility it was to discharge me toward the end; it turned out both of them had to sign, and that was efficient enough.
Overall, every nurse was a goddamn saint. They all deserve to be canonized, but more than that, they deserve to be paid a hell of a lot more, and they deserve better hours, and they deserve more support.
Hospitals like this must be a nightmare for white supremacists. The vast majority of the staff are POC. The CAT scan guy was Nicaraguan, my oral surgeon was Ethiopian, my admitting nurse was Jamaican (and really cute!), and the rest of the staff was almost entirely POCs. The other physicians, the attending and trauma docs, were white; funny how only the Ethiopian one seemed to care about my well-being, the rest treated me like a component on an assembly line.
And, y’know, the food wasn’t that bad at all. People mythologize how bad hospital food is. My one deserved complaint is that it was loaded with too much sugar. Every tray had jello, fruit juice and soda. By the time my side table had three ginger ales on it, one nurse said, “You don’t want the soda pop?” I said, “I’m a savory fellow. Please bring me more hot tea and hot broth.” And blissfully, she brought me a lot more tea. Lipton, but I was in no place to complain; it was tea, dammit, and that meant I would survive.
I did learn never to try eating an orange off the rind when you have a lacerated lip. Ouch! And I bet every time Julia Child was due to be hospitalized she snuck a small bottle of salt in her purse.
So the people were great. The policies… not so much.
“Skipping doses or starting and stopping an antiviral medicine can allow a virus to change/adapt so that the antiviral is no longer effective. This is antiviral resistance.”
First and most egregious stupidity of all: after taking three doses of Paxlovid (night, morning, night), they confiscated the rest of the box and didn’t let me have more. You do not interrupt a course of antivirals! Do you want nastier variants? Because that’s how you fucking get nastier variants! It’s just the same as with antibiotics!
You know what they gave me instead? Vitamin C and Zinc. That was their “Covid prophylaxis protocol.” Vitamin C and Zinc. I was in the friggin’ dark ages.
The selections on the TV were terrible, with far too many religious shows.
And the hospital is already breaking down, with the halls filled with patients who have no beds, beds that are well past their lifetimes and don’t work well anymore, patchwork plumbing and HVAC. If that’s more representative of hospitals elsewhere in this country, I’m very afraid of what the next decade will bring in healthcare.
* Any names changed to protect the various.
