Other Point of View

My last blog post was a story about odd voices being heard in an abandoned hospital wing.  Today's post is the same story, but from a different point of view.  This time is the patient that is telling their side of the tale.

I have no idea what all has happened to me over the last few days. My doctor said the procedure would be a simple one. While I would have to stay in the hospital overnight, it shouldn't have been more than a day or two. I checked in almost a week ago and they still haven't given me a definite release date yet.

I have a grasp on most of the medical issues that have kept me from going home. They are all dictated clearly on my chart. An unexpected allergy to the anesthesia caused some complications during the surgery. It took me an extra day to recover from the anaphylactic shock before they could go to an alternate anesthesia and actually perform the surgery that I first needed. It took me longer than normal to completely wake up from the alternate anesthesia The doctor had actually told me this was a possibility with what they had experienced during the first attempt at my surgery. It was what happened while I was in and out of it during the day it took me to wake up that has me confused.

I only remember flashes and bits and pieces. I was on a gurney and being wheeled down a bright hallway. There were lots of people and noises. I can only guess that something major was happening. Next thing I know, I'm still on the gurney but in a darker part of the hospital. I'm being wheeled into a room with yellow walls instead of the white I've seen everywhere else. The attendant rolls my gurney into a space by the window and quickly leaves. I was too in and out of consciousness to realize I was now completely alone. At least I thought I was.

I couldn't tell you how much time passed while I was alone in that room. I just remember waking up to voices and nobody being there. Generally, it was only one person talking. It was difficult to make out his words, either from his soft voice or because the drugs in my system. I did think I heard the name Dr. Rizowski. I got the impression he was speaking to me, but I couldn't see him to be certain. Sometimes, I would hear more than one voice. Whole conversations passing back and forth over my sleeping body. I understood none of it.

Finally, I was starting to have more waking moments than not. The voices were still there. I looked around the room and saw nobody was there. I looked over the walls for a television or radio, there wasn't one at all. The only other thing I could think of was a loud TV or radio in another room. An orderly eventually came into the room and apologized for me being left alone for so long. Apparently, there had been a major accident involving a cattle truck and a passenger train. The hospital staff had been swamped with injured people and a couple of officers that were hurt by panicked cows. What happened next extended my stay in the hospital for a few days under observation.

The orderly repeatedly apologized for me being left in an abandoned wing of the hospital. It was little more than a mumble, but I told him I had heard voices in that wing. The orderly only shook his head. He said the entire wing had been unused since the hospital expanded. The previous guy had been in a rush to help with the people hurt in the train and had left me somewhere he felt would be out of the way. It had taken the majority of the day for someone to realize I wasn't where I was supposed to be and start looking for me. I mentioned that Dr. Rizowski had visited with me. The orderly suddenly stopped and asked me to repeat the name. I did and he was silent the rest of the trip to my new room.

I was watching some pointless show in my new room when someone from the psychological department came to visit me. The orderly had mentioned what I had said to her and she wanted to check on my mental faculties before signing my release. She informed me that there was no Dr. Rizowski currently working in the hospital. The only doctor with a name like that had been killed by a patient's disgruntled family member years ago. The hospital kept me three extra days to ensure my reactions to the anesthesia hadn't done any permanent damage to my brain. I quickly realized I didn't want to tell them about all of the other voices in that room so they would let me go home sooner.

Healers

A friend of mine had a recent visit to a hospital for a quick surgical operation.  After her recovery, she mentioned a drug induced dream she had during her stay.  Today's blog post was inspired by her spooky tale.

I first walked through the doors of this hospital so long ago. The years have passed in a single breath. I spend so much time here, it seems like I never really leave. Patients are rolled in and rolled out. More patients have come and gone, most of them successfully, than I care to count. So many patients use this hospital that they were able to afford a major expansion.

New wings of the building with fancy new machines and operating rooms with the equipment to allow doctors to perform all the advanced new techniques. The new rooms and fancy hallways meant the older wings would be used less and less. Eventually, the hospital bigwigs stopped sending patients down these halls and putting them in these rooms. Janitorial would only send someone to clean the floors as a hazing ritual for new hires. Maintenance would park inoperable gurneys and other pieces of equipment in the vacant halls while they waited for parts or an order for disposal. I was the only one that still regularly walked these hallways and entered these rooms.

I guess I shouldn't say that patients were never put in these unused rooms. Sometimes an intern would mislabel some transfer orders for a comatose patient or a doctor would want to temporarily “relocate” a patient that was healthy but still being difficult. Then they would be put in a room and I would watch over them. I would discuss their condition with them even though they generally were in no condition to hear me. Eventually, the intern's mistake would be uncovered or the doctor's nerves would have settled and someone would come to collect the patient I had carefully watched over. They would be would be returned to the normal, active, upstanding, shiny new areas of the hospital.

Even though it was rare for patients to be placed in the rooms I watched over, I was not alone. Many former patients would greet me in the halls. We would discuss many topics of the day. The weather, the local scholastic and professional sports teams, the latest entertainment releases. Conversations with these friendly souls did wonders to diminish the omnipresent boredom and silence when there were no patients for me to visit during my rounds. When a particularly difficult case would come under my watch, I would sometimes ask one of these former patients to visit and speak with the patient while I continued with my rounds. I will never get a chance to see follow-up reports or read dismissal charts. Because of this, I can't be certain if my efforts have any actual impact or not, but I believe strongly enough that it does good that I will keep on doing it as long as the hospital keeps accepting patients.

****** ****** *******

“Sir, I know you asked me not to report this any more, but it's happening again. We've had patients saying they have heard voices while in the older wings of the hospital.”

An older doctor sighs heavily. His impatience and exhaustion with the topic obvious. “Jensen, we will go over this one more time. The original wing of this hospital is unused and only rarely entered. Any patients that say they hear voices there are experiencing drug induced auditory hallucinations. We've sent out a number of memos requesting that patients no longer be placed in those rooms. If we are still getting reports of voices being heard in that wing, it seems those memos have gone unheeded. It seems we must draft a new one immediately and make sure every one pays attention. We must not let rumors grow that this is a haunted hospital.”

“But sir, these patient stateme.......”

“This is not a haunted hospital! There is no ghost of a doctor that died from a stroke while on his rounds. While patients have died in the long history of this facility, their spirits do not roam the unused halls. The patients that reported these voices were experiencing a side effect of the drugs that had been administered to them. This is the last time we will speak of this. If you mention it again, that will be the last words you utter as an employee of this hospital.”

Have you ever had an odd dream during an illness or while on one medication or another?