Recently, I had to spend the night in the hospital. I'm fine now, and fortunately had never spent the night in a hospital bed in my entire life. The only reason they kept me overnight was because they needed clearance from a doctor to discharge me, and because I was pretty healthy they couldn't justify calling a specialist in late at night just to sign me out.
The way I look at it. It's better to be as independent as possible when you're in the hospital. Especially in my case, because I wasn't seriously ill and I really didn't need a lot of fussing over. But I didn't wanna be stuck in bed without a book or a jacket or anything else for an extended period of time.
I've visited many friends in hospitals, and there are a few things that are really helpful to them while they're there, and I'm not talking about stuffed animals and flowers.
Flowers are fine unless somebody's in ICU, in which case they can't have them. Flowers take up valuable space on the tiny side table, and the nurses to have to move the flowers along with you if you change rooms. They also need to be watered. To me it doesn't seem like the best gift to bring somebody. So I thought I would share with you what I asked my husband to bring that really helped me in my overnight stay at the hospital.
I had him bring me a backpack from the house with the following items in it: a pair of socks, a sweater and a scarf, a pair of slides to walk around with, some snacks, a book, my reading glasses, some lip balm, a box of tissue (the hospital stuff is like sand paper), and a large water bottle.
If you do bring something to somebody, be sure that they're allowed to have it. Obviously, in some cases, you can't have food or water or anything else without permission of the nurses. In my case, however, I was able to have it. The water bottle was especially important because the nurses will bring you water when they can, but if you're lucky you get a small cup of water, and frankly, they're busy with people who are really sick.
Another really helpful item people don't think to bring is an extra-long phone charging cable. if you've ever been in a hospital, you realize that those little 2 foot long cables that come with your phone aren't gonna cut it when the outlet is 4 feet away from your bed. Everyone winds up tripping over it, your phone falls on the scary, dirty hospital floor, and it's a real hassle. Longer ones solve this issue.
I wound up needing to use my backpack as a pillow, because they had no beds upstairs, so I spent the night in an ER room without a pillow. It was actually pretty interesting. They kept asking me if I wanted my door closed and I said "oh no, this is quite entertaining". I found out later when they moved me down the hall that my room had been near the "psych" part of the ER. No wonder it was so entertaining!
Everyone was great, and they told me they didn't want me to leave, (I guess because I wasn't giving them trouble), because if I left, "someone else would be in that bed"!
Nurses are truly amazing at what they do, but you've got to help them out too. They really don't need to be spending every second bringing you some silly thing that in many cases, you could've easily had someone bring you from home.
So the next time you're in a hospital or visiting someone who is, think practical!
Heidi Harris
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