In about two weeks, I will be celebrating my 87th birthday. In all those years I have, miraculously, never spent a night in a hospital bed. I may actually have been kept overnight when I had my tonsils out at age 4 or 5, so someone suggested that I qualify that statement by saying I’ve never spent an “unplanned” stay in the hospital.
Well, that Cal Ripken-like health record came to a screeching halt this week with three days and two disrupted nights in the University of Chicago hospital, split between the emergency ward and a regular hospital room. I had hoped to be writing about something more cheerful and uplifting this week because I will go radio silent for the next couple of weeks as we make the annual pilgrimage to our happy place in southern New Hampshire where we lived for 11 years and to which we have returned for parts of 44 summers since.
Here’s the compressed version of what happened. I had gone to the hospital earlier to get some blood work done that was requested by my endocrinologist to help her decide on the next round of medications for my osteoporosis. Imagine my surprise when one of the doctors on my care team contacted me to suggest that I make an appointment in Urgent Care because some of my numbers signaled potential problems. At that appointment, the doctor expressed particular concern about my kidney function, among other things. She believed that I had an infection that was contributing to my kidney numbers and that the best course of treatment was a hospital stay during which the infection could be attacked by a strong round of IV antibiotics.
The problem was that no beds were available in the hospital and the best route was through the emergency room. That sentence is the most critical in my story because what followed was an 11 hour stay in the emergency waiting room in the company of about 40 poor souls, many of whom use the emergency room as their primary source of medical care. Just as I was resigning myself to sleeping in the chair that had been my home for so many hours, my name was called and I was escorted to the emergency ward itself. Still no room, but a bed in the hall, one I could actually lie down on, looked very inviting.
The emergency ward at night is a strange place. Eerie quiet alternating with the jarring noises emanating from unseen machines. More blood work by a helpful male nurse, several hour-long bursts of sleep, still in my street clothes and shoes, and finally in the morning and early afternoon a CT scan and ultrasound in search of a suspected kidney stone as the source of my problem. Later that day, I’m assigned a room in the hospital, where I get to eat my first actual meal in two days and am free to finally shed my street clothes.
There are the usual sleep disruptions – two blood pressure readings and a 5 AM blood drawing which almost make me long for that bed in the ER, then a long day of waiting with no further treatment except for another round of IV fluids. I am normally a compliant and cooperative patient, but I resort to badgering the nurses to contact my doctor to ask what else needs to be done before he can recommend discharge. That finally happens around 5PM just as my fears are growing that I will be stuck here over the weekend, when the staff is thin and when on this particular weekend the rotations change and I will have green practitioners to deal with.
It looks like the stone is probably the cause of my problems, with a possible infection to complicate matters, but I’m a civilian again. I have to emphasize that my nurses were all supportive and caring and my brief encounters with the doctors were respectful– I even, against all odds, had a really decent dinner – but the institutional setting relegates you to the role of anonymous patient — and to the erasure of the identity one usually carries– professional life, family, political take on the world. The only relief from that blur was a lively encounter with a young Black transporter who was moving my wheelchair to my new room. He recognized my Brooklyn Dodgers hat which launched us into an animated conversation in the universal language of sports that ran from Jackie Robinson to the triumphant Knicks. It was the rare moment when I felt myself again.
As someone who has escaped hospitals for so much of my life, I have no right to complain about any aspect of these three days and two nights. Annoying and frustrating though the waiting might have been, I was safe and cared for throughout. My team of regular doctors was tracking me via the modern miracle of electronic records and two hours after discharge I was seated at the dinner table of a dear friend, as mind and body slowly returned to their normal settings. I’ll see you in a few weeks, assuming that body doesn’t play some new tricks on me.
