Punkin Chunkin "RANT ON"

Well. They got bored with me and chucked me out the hospital doors yesterday evening. By the time we got to a place to get prescriptions and drove to Montclair it was about 10pm and I was in EXCRUCIATING pain (also a 10). Poor Eliot. I was all but screaming a good part of the way to Montclair. Every bump or side to side shift was more than I could take. Didn't help that the lumbar support in the crappy rental car was not movable. Did I mention OWWW?!

They said to leave the hospital I needed to 1) poo, 2) not have a fever for 24 hours, 3) be able to get up and walk around, 4) be managed painwise by non-iv narcotics...and be in the 4-5 range pain scale wise. Guess how many I had accomplished by the time they cut me loose? 0. None. They don't want you in the hospital and with the fragrance allergies, they doubly didn't like having to deal with me, not to mention that I was getting more and more disbelieving of what they were trying to feed me. One day I lifted the blue plastic plate cover to find... AN EMPTY PLATE! Another day a big leg of chicken (with the menu laying on top of it that said LACTO OVO VEGETARIAN, SPECIAL DIET, NO SUBSTITUTIONS! So of course I hadn't hit #1 because I'd not had enough to eat. I have a fever b/c I have thrush & a UTI. Just too much. Many of the staff were nice and tried really hard. Especially the night nurse I had on the 2nd & 3rd nights. She was SO great. And several of my day nurses were very nice too. The only staff that seemed to truly understand the fragrance thing was the maintenance/cleaning staff. But there was this bizarre thing that the upper staff kept doing which was to trot people into my room and stick them close to me and say 'how about him/her can you smell them?'

I am NOT the fragrance crash test dummy. Would you hand someone allergic to latex a pair of gloves and say, 'put these on so I can see if they are latex'? Would you blow peanut dust in the face of someone allergic to peanuts and ask if that was ok afterwards?

So none of the 4 were met, but they didn't want to have to continue to 'have the hassle' of the fragrance issue, so they put on the full court press and coerced me to accept a discharge. I figure at the end of the day I will get better sooner being out of the hospital than in. But the struggle of doing ANYTHING including sit up or lay down the first couple of days is daunting.

Now we're at Neil & Pamela's & I'm up and down every 3 hours to have pain meds. Sleepus Interruptus. Painus Increasus to acquire Painus Decreasus.

Ok. Enough ranting. Check the next one for more factually based hoo haa and what not.