A Good Hospital Experience

I have always felt that hospitals get a lot of unfair criticism for the simple reason that you are almost always there for a bad reason. When you think about it the only time you go to a hospital for something joyful is the birth of a baby as just about every other time your stay or visit there is associated with sickness, illness or injury. So the bottom line is you go to a hospital in pretty much a bad mood and it doesn’t take much for your mood to get even worse when things don’t go like you want them to.

With that said when you are waiting in a hospital it seems like time never moves
and you keep looking at your watch or a clock wondering what’s wrong. It’s not the best place for those that have don’t have patience and while it can become frustrating what we rarely ever see is the big picture…there is simply a lot happening at the same time and we really have no idea what’s going on. Take Tuesday at Community Medical Center where my father was scheduled to undergo colon resection surgery after a rather large mass was found during a colonoscopy by Dr. Paul DeMartino last week. We had already met with Dr. Howard Berger who would be performing the surgery and he was optimistic that the mass was not cancerous and the operation would go just fine. Of course there is nothing routine about surgery for a soon-to-be 83 year old that has other medical issues as well but all in all we felt pretty good heading into yesterday’s procedure.

The surgery was scheduled for 2pm and Dr. Berger wanted my father there by 10am to get him prepped, ready and relaxed. However before too long we got an indication that things were behind schedule for a variety of reasons, including unexpected emergencies which do occur in hospitals. My father was very understanding, probably more so than my brother, sister and myself and he had more reason to complain because he had not had anything to eat or drink since Monday.

Anyway the 2pm surgery did not take place until 6pm and by the time Dr. Berger came out to see us the waiting room was pretty much empty. However the news was all good as everything went as well as we could expect and by 10pm Dad was getting great care in the Surgical Stepdown Unit. Speaking of care…we must have come in contact with a dozen nurses and others during the day and every one of them was just tremendous. I would do a disservice by singling them out but it’s obvious they are the glue that keeps it all together. It was a long and good day for us at Community Medical Center…oh and by the way for $1.50 you can’t beat the French Fries.