One Flu Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
A few days of my life have been stolen by the new flu. At least, the doctor thinks it was H1N1 although we have to wait ten days for the provincial labs to return the test results, by which time it will all be irrelevant.
A week ago Monday, I got the feeling I might be coming down with a cold. You know, scratchy throat, bit of a headache and generally under the weather. Then, Tuesday afternoon, WHAM! Sirens blaring, heavy boots clumping up the stairs, firemen and EMS people bundling me off to hospital as quickly as possible.
Not that I objected too much, mind you. When your temperature is over 104, and you are having difficulty catching your breath, you begin to worry. At least, I did.
The hospital was working under very difficult circumstances. There were gurneys along every wall and the place was full of ambulance personnel with their charges. It was obvious the flu pandemic was in full swing!
Soon after arrival I was put in an isolation room in Emergency, where I lay for 18 hours with little to cover me other than my hospital gown, and no pillow, but with all the oxygen I needed. I received a Ventolin nebulizer every four hours, day and night, for the next few days, but the three straight capsules they started me with afforded me the most relief (and the tremors).
After a restless night I fell into an exhausted sleep for about four hours, and when I woke I found my fever had subsided. I been taken to Ultrasound by mistake, and was left in the hallway there for an hour until they found the right patient. Then, the same porter wheeled me off for a CT scan, which nobody knew anything about either. The nurse there seemed to think it was my fault when they found out I was the wrong patient again, but the porter just wheeled me back and said the world was going crazy around him.
With all the travel around the various imaging departments completed, and having passed the swab-up-the-bum MRSA test, I was admitted to my very own isolation room. I shared it with a hepa filter the size of a small refrigerator near the foot of the bed, which exhaled noisily through the aluminum-framed window. There was more security on the door than in some open prisons. The room made a statement: We take this disease seriously. The hepa filter made a statement, too: I was here before you, so learn to sleep with my noise.
And I did, at times. I was so wired on prednisone and Ventolin that sleep at night was well-nigh impossible, but I managed to doze serenely through most of my days. Slumber notwithstanding, I still managed to read two books: Ghost (about a ghost writer who helps a former Prime Minister of England write his autobiography), and The Evolution of God. I had already started the latter, but was able to finish the last two-thirds in full wakefulness, thanks to the corticosteroids.
The food was appalling. What more can be said? I told them I did not drink sweetened fruit juices, but one came with every meal. As did the unavoidable coffee (‘I’d rather have tea, please.’) and the fibre-less white bread rolls with margarine and jam that seem to be part of everyday hospital fare. Perhaps I needed to pretend that I had religious objections to the food in order to demand what my body was starting to crave. Instead, I asked my wife to bring in some seafood and salad from Chris’s Greek restaurant and keep me plied with fresh fruit. I suppose, in truth, most patients in that hospital were too sick to notice how bad the food was, or complain about it, so my misery was probably a sign that I was feeling well enough to go home. In fact, that may be how they decide on who’s ready to leave.
The ‘fresh’ apple slices in a little bag were quite nice, but most of the food they served was not conducive to wellness — and isn’t that what hospital is about? A vegetarian lasagna ought to have discernible plant life in it, not just a condensed-tomato-soup-coloured goop between the layers of soggy pasta. While not expecting the shepherd’s pie to be made of mutton or lamb (that would be too much), I was looking for some granularity to indicate that there was meat under the too-white layer of rather wet potato (flakes, no doubt). Instead, there was a thick smear of brown sludge that was quite disgusting. It was accompanied by maize, which I count among the feeblest of vegetables (gran said it was only good for chickens) and the least appetising, unless fresh from the field on a late summer’s evening. I wanted the name of the head dietician, but was never given it. Jamie Oliver was in town last week. It’s a pity he didn’t come down with the flu and end up in the same hospital. After his fuss over school meals, which got the UK government’s attention, imagine the furore he might kick up over the food in a place where nutrition and health ought to be important.
Well, I braised some lamb shanks when I got home, with lots of garlic and rosemary (straight from the pot on the kitchen window sill), with mint sauce, too, freshly made from our garden’s mint patch. Together with a wild rice and vegetable pilaf and snow peas, this simple meal made me feel a lot better.
Yes, food does make you feel good, which makes me ask myself why hospitals just don’t seem to get it. Is it all about money? If so, I’d be willing to pay for a better choice of menu next time I am in hospital. Wouldn’t you?