A DAY AT THE HOSPITAL

I've always admired doctors but hated hospitals because it remains me of helplessness and pain. I know on the other hand it’s a place of hope and the ideal place to get treated for diseases as opposed to the other options (you know what I mean).

I've had to spend time at a hospital in the last few months and it has intensified my distaste for the place, and I must repeat not the health workers! Fortunately it is a really good hospital I was visiting this time around. The floors are really clean and the restrooms surprisingly fresh smelling, you can imagine that my olfactometer was at full blast. The doctors are cordial and most of the nurses are bordering on sweet but a few have obviously missed their callings. For the first time in my experience (which is really nothing to be reckoned with) the AC’s are

working and the nurses even insist on having at least one on to prevent stuffiness! Really? In Nigeria?! Well, I didn’t mind spending the night knowing that someone will make sure I wasn’t hot and uncomfortable even though I wasn’t a patient. I got to see the canteen and eat there and it was gooooood, I tell you there’s something happening here that isn’t happening in some other places. We bought jollof rice and it had all the works; carrots, green peas and spring onions and soft spiced up beef. I don’t know why we expect hospital food to be bland and uninteresting but we do. Maybe it’s because of all the health tips we get these days on healthy eating and dieting and how most of what we eat can be the end of us. One way or the other, we have concluded that healthy eating is basically eating tasteless meals mostly uncooked.

A few months ago I was at this same hospital but didn’t stay the night so I couldn’t get to explore. This time I decided to explore areas that will not raise suspicion. (I’ve been so impressed I’m thinking of having my kids here if I don’t go abroad for that).

However, the soporific atmosphere was enough to cause even me to drift in and out of sleep gingerly watching over my patient like an aggressive mother hen.

A number of medical series like; “House” and “Grey’s Anatomy” have given me some insight into how hospitals are run and diagnoses made. As I write this piece, there are interns being tutored by a doctor (don’t suppose she’s an attending, she looks too young for that and she just told me a story of how my mum introduce them to Sunday school when we were living in Kaduna State, seeing that I was three years at that time…) and I’m trying not to stare because I can see the competition and tension I’ve watched on the medical series. I tend to remember the drama more that the diagnoses though. It’s intriguing to see experts at their posts, I can tell from my position across the room that the doctor knows what she’s talking about.
A really big man in a doctor’s coat just walked to my patients’ bed and I recognized him as our doctor. He seems gentler than the female doctor across the room and his interns are smiling. He is encouraging them to do some presentation about stuff I know nothing about. I’m struggling to eavesdrop now because the curtain has been drawn and all I can hear is, IV and CV and bla bla bla and how the patient should start working around and then a lot of Hausa but they were all smiling. As they live I begin to wonder about life and its stages. It is said that life is like a flower that blooms in the sun and dies when it sets (this is thoroughly paraphrased). I believe that if you look at it from just one angle but if you see life as a gift it’ll be a wonder throughout. We sleep every night oblivious to what may or may not be happening, wake up at dawn and walk or drive around, talk to people, eat . . . it’s a miracle and even at death we just cease to exist on this earth. For me its sun all round for the one alive and it only sets on the people around when he dies.

The woman adjacent from where I’m sitting is giving off diabetic symptoms but she has hypertension, it’s so disheartening to watch them try to make her better. She just threw up some really irritating liquid and while I’m here feeling sick to my stomach at the site the two nurses with her are so comforting and understanding, I definitely didn’t miss my calling. Throughout yesterday I watched this same woman mess up her IV because she was restless and frustrate the nurse on night duty and I wondered what she was here for. This morning it looks like she has taken a turn for the worse. Anyway, I recently learnt that, having no symptoms doesn’t ascertain a clean bill of health and there is something called phantom pain. Therefore, I conclude that having symptoms does not predict ill health, it could be phantom or psychological or a message saying, “Get some rest”.

(During my undergraduate years, there was this course that entailed the study of some ancient material that dealt with existentialism and some other theories as perceived by these writers and my lecturer got us to study “psychosomatic analysis”. A lot of these writers were disillusioned with life and existence complaining about its monotony and challenges and it began to affect their health. Apart from the fact that I believed they were bored to death so they thought life was not worth living, I think a number of them were deranged . . . phantom ailments must have plagued them as their only route to some form of activity).

I looked around this morning as I try to find the room we were to be moved to, and it occurred to me that some people may be hooked on hospitals. Alarming isn’t it, but it’s one of the ways people become drug addicts and another way to get attention (if you get a hospital with nice nurses).

We had been transferred to a more private ward as my patient is some form of dignitary and it’s a lot better for privacy but I’ll miss all the drama of the open ward. It’s not as ideal as I’ll like to paint in this room some things are not as on point leaving my earlier perception ostensible but I’ll stick to making myself happy. As I admire the upgrade, I realize the hospital is not as bad as I thought and I don’t feel like I’m choking or fainting or shrinking for that matter; it’s really not half as bad and I don’t mind spending the night again. I’m hoping it will not become a frequent occurrence though. More than ever I know I’m easily irritated when I see or hear stuff and in the last two days I felt like throwing up, holding my breath, crying, cringing and a few other things but I try to focus on the fact that everything added up to recovery for the sick ones.

Well, that’s where we are today but tomorrow I’m off to see other sites with fresh air and where the healthy people are more than sick ones.


TIP
An attendant cleaned up the vomit this morning with a lot of detergent and after moping it up he poured vim all over the floor and wiped it clean and the floor actually shone. That’s a tip for all you with tiled floors.

*State House Clinic, Abuja