(no subject)

[cblj_backup]

Mum's still in the hospital today, though that's expected and she's doing much better than she was. We've had the requisite eleven-at-night-emergency-call because they kept trying to make her do something she didn't want to. And it turns out didn't need to, though Lucky had to drive down there and shout before they'd listen. I offered to go with him, but thankfully did not have to.

This a conversation the physical therapist had with my mother about her knee replacement:

Therapist: *pointing to the 1-10 pain scale* So where is your pain at today?
Mum: It's in my knee.
Me: *quietly dies in the background*

Meanwhile, I have deveoped a theory about the hospital cafeteria. It's super-tiny; it has a salad bar that's about two feet square, a bunch of prepackaged snacks, a "grill", and an "entree" station. The "grill" for the last three days has been entirely composed of fried food, while the entree station has involved a lot of cream sauces and carbohydrates. Weirdly unhealthy for a hospital. I looked around while we were there for lunch today and realised that the patients don't eat there and neither do the medical staff -- so this is a cafeteria which is basically devoted entirely to supplying comfort food to families. It's like one big heating-tray of sublimated anxiety.

Unfortunately between the chicken pasta and the fried food there was not much I could reasonably eat, so I had to settle for some hummus.

You know what's not that comforting? Hummus.

Comments

[marymac.livejournal.com]

Poor physio. I'm sure they've had worse though.

When I broke my ankle I accidentally caused a contretemps between the physios and the lady in the next room over why I was getting lessons in doing stairs while she was being packed off to her daughter's bungalow, culminating with the impeccable argument of 'Because she's thirty and you're eighty-four!'

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

Also dude who WANTS to do stairs...

[marymac.livejournal.com]

Little old ladies from East Belfast, apparently.

I think at least half of her opposition was to the thought of spending six weeks in Carryduff, which is fair enough, really. I wouldn't want to either.

[i-phianassa.livejournal.com]

My tired brain read "hummus" as "humans". I sort of laughed and thought "wait, where is he going with this?"

[caffienekitty]

Well, at least in my experience, most humans really aren't that comforting.

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

Apparently you're not alone!

Humans in hospitals are rarely comforting. :D

[madripoor-rose.livejournal.com]

Aw, and here we always joked that it was the cardiology dept drumming up business.

Our hospital has a McDonald's in it, like a mall food court.

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

Honestly? A McDonalds would have been an improvement, since it would have had more variety :D I could have gotten some apples! And maybe a pie!

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

Hospital cafeteria fare is notoriously shitty. And yes: "one big heating-tray of sublimated anxiety" is a perfect description.

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

I know that there are costs involved and such, but it does seem like this hospital at least, and hospitals in general, seem to be actively striving to make visiting the ill as adventurous as possible.

[schnoogle.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the following classic exchange:

Doctor: So what brought you to the emergency department today?
Patient: An ambulance.

[evilstorm.livejournal.com]

On the flip side of all this is the orthopaedics vs anaesthetics joke:

Anaesthetist: Where is the fracture?
Orthopod: The fracture is in the emergency department.

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

LOL!

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

LOL! When you're in pain, literal is sometimes all you can manage, I guess...

[caffienekitty]

An excellent and quite likely true observation on hospital cafeterias.

For all the time I've spent in the hospital visiting, I don't think I've ever been in the hospital cafeteria here. It closes long before visiting hours are over and I can only get in late in the day due to work. The rota of menu choices posted in the elevators would definitely support your theory though. I'd just thought the menu options were so unhealthy to drum up more business for the hospital. XD

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

Yeah, given the minimal size of this cafeteria the hours are kind of outrageous. Must be nice to only be open in two hour spurts...

[abby1000.livejournal.com]

When my Mom had her knee replacement, she was in a 24-bed orthopedic hospital with no cafeteria. The staff would feed visitors whatever they fed the patients if they had enough notice. Otherwise it was the evil vending machine.

Hope your Mom feels better, the recovery period can be pretty long.

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

Hospitals do seem to enjoy limiting comfort as much as possible. Lucky was going to go get a soda after his midnight visit, but they lock up the vending machines at 10pm....

[eofs.livejournal.com]

What the... but... surely that's the point of a vending machine. *Boggle*

[ysabet.livejournal.com]

Weirdly enough, the food in Tucson Medical Center's cafeteria is actually really good. I used to go for chemo to the cancer center there (it's now in a new facility, which I hope has its own cafeteria) and the hospital is HUMONGOUS, so I guess they put some effort into it. The place has won a series of awards for the food-- it has multiple counters for things like pizza, fried chicken, vegetarian/vegan meals, a large salad bar, and there's a series of cold cases for pre-made sandwiches, desserts and chicken salad things. And last but not least (**drumroll**) it has sushi. Yeah, I know. And it's just little sealed trays of California Rolls and so forth, but you can get sushi there. It's not fantastic, but it's not terrible either.

I never felt like eating much when I stopped in, considering the circumstances, but I think I mostly lived on the containers of sliced oranges and apples while I was going there.

[sophie-spence.livejournal.com]

The secret to enjoying a good meal in hospital, my dear Sam, is to bring it from home.

[kannnichtfranz.livejournal.com]

Oh! I have been only vaguely following LJ, but your mom had her knee replaced? My mom had a knee replacement surgery four weeks ago. "In my KNEE" cracked me up, I have to tell my mom. But -- two weeks. Two weeks was a turning point for me. And my mom, I suppose, but I'm not sure she noticed like I did. I was the caretaker, and two weeks to the day was the first night I got a whole night's sleep. (My mom didn't, but at least things weren't bad enough to wake me up.) Nights have not been fun for my mom since knee surgery. It's good there are two of you helping out -- good luck!

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

Man, my mum is doing WAY better than that -- she's sleeping nights, walking around, generally capable of looking after herself except when she's getting out of chairs. You have all my sympathy for that!

[ranuel.livejournal.com]

Coming in late. I do that, sorry.

I work at a 40 bed rehab hospital that is the left side of a building we share with a 120 bed psych hospital so you'd think we'd be more than large enough to have a full service cafeteria. Yeah, right.

At some point before I started there some bean counter decided that it would be much more cost efficient to bring our food in from the ginormous kitchen at the humungous academic medical center across town we belong to. This meant that all entrees had to be things that could survive being made several hours in advance and kept in a heated transport thingy. We did have a salad bar but there was a big outbreak of Norovirus and the Risk Manager made them discontinue it.

It's gotten better in the last couple of years after they contracted with Morrisons to run food services. A lot of food still gets shipped in but they let us have a pizza oven last year and a small grill that can be used to cook other stuff fresh. I can't eat wheat and the entrees have improved to the point that I can eat there several times a week if I bring my own bread. We now get some non-mushy veggies and there is a cooler with fresh fruit cups and pre-made salads.