Are you being served? No :-(

Early evening:

I filled in meal order forms. They have not been collected. I have smelled food in the corridors, asked nursing staff about dinner. No dinner. Best response from nurses, Oh, yes, it does seem to be a little late...

I can guess at the problem trail:

The doctor booked me in for surgery plus an overnight. I was booked in for day surgery, NO overnight stay. This is the original problem. It has only partly been corrected.

At admission we said, I'm meant to be here for surgery AND and overnight stay. By the time I finish surgery, some records had been corrected. I was moved straight to a room, to stay the night.

No-one has told the meal providers!

So I'm not on the meals list. No-one looks in my room to collect a meal order, no-one looks in my room to see if there is an unexpected "guest".

Nurses don't seem to know how to get a meal to my room. Or are reluctant, or too busy, or...? I bet that nursing and meals are separate organisations, different employers... Only set up to communicate on "expected" issues.

Meanwhile, a separate problem but with a similar... "we'll get to it..." response:

My drip bag (saline plus sugar?) is nearly empty. I'll disconnect it when it's empty, says the newly arrived duty nurse.

Now it's empty. No nurse.

Now it's empty -- and the tube is red. I'm feeding my blood back into the drip bag!! This, I. Do. Not. Like.

I press the nurse call button. No response. And again. No response.

I walk down the corridor to the nurse's station.

I'm feeding blood back into my drip, I tell them. I seem to have missed dinner, I tell them. My nurse call button gets no response, I tell them.

Perhaps it's my low blood sugar talking. But this entire post is a big black mark against the hospital.

Nurse phones meals, asks for a meal to my room. Nurse also provides a plate of sandwiches. I start on the sandwiches, finish the meal, am now finishing the sandwiches. Feeling less hungry.

Nurse disconnects the empty drip bag but leaves the cannula in. Makes sense. But I do have the impression that this is less a sensible decision, more a case of expediency. I suspect that nurse would need approval to remove the cannula. The hospital depends -- I am guessing -- less on staff expertise and authority, more dependence on process. In my... guessing.

And as a related... problem? I take three tablets with my meal, three that I planned to take, that I told hospital staff that I would be taking. Previous hospital visits, every tablet was handed out by a nurse, I was watched until I had definitely taken the tablets. Tonight, no one asks, no-one suggests, no-one else knows what tablets I have taken.

Different level of serious surgery, I guess. Still, it would be nice to feel that someone is remembering that I should be taking tablets. Even if they are "my own".

All of this is a blank mark against the hospital... or a black mark against its organisation and processes. In my opinion :-)

To end more positively... I phone Deb earlier, very nice to talk with her :-)  The hospital is clean, it's peaceful, there's a very nice view out of the windows. I plan to have a good night's sleep.

After I finish those sandwiches. And after the promised evening tea trolley :-)

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This post is typed with the "soft" Swype keyboard. Lots of retyping has been done. A real keyboard -- with no software guessing what I could have meant -- would be 100% better.

I apologise for the nonsense that I will have failed to notice.

I'll be interested to reread it myself... to see if I can then guess what I meant to say. Before Swype assumed that I really meant to say something completely different. Something that a million strangers had typed somewhere else... Or whatever Swype does.

Goodnight!

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Dr Nick Lethbridge / Consulting Dexitroboper
Agamedes Consulting / Problems? Solved.
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Now so much more than a simple holiday blog:  https://notdotdeaddotyet.blogspot.com.au :-)
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There were two classes of literary reviewers: "Those who had little to say and those who had nothing." … Max Beerbohm