About that Hospital Food – a funny story.

Picture: Grilled Prime Rib, Eggs, and Hash Browns for breakfast at Marlene & Glen’s Diner, Highway 49, Plymouth, Amador County, Sierra Foothills, California

This will be my last note on the medical side of my life for awhile as I continue on with my recovery. I will say however that I did get my arm cast off yesterday, and am now wearing a wrist brace for the duration of the healing process. It’s nice to have the cast off, but without the rigid support, my wrist actually feels far more fragile and weak.

I did want to pass along one story that one of my best friends reminded me of when he simply asked, “How was the hopsital food?” On this week-long stay in the hopsital, I barely ate 500 calories in four days. Everything about the hospital food was just horrid and inedible. My wife, Connie, tried the food that the nurses brought and said it “wasn’t that bad.” I’m assuming she was right, and it must have been me & my ‘condition’.

Now the story: Years ago I had what was later determined by doctors to be a major anxiety attack, brought on in part because of a call to the advice nurse at our (same) hospital. I’d spent a whole day and night hunched over a coffee table in my living room, looping and editing slides on a lightbox. At about 11:00pm after being hunched forward for that much time, I suddenly felt my heart go into an irregular rthym for a few moments. Never having experienced that before, I was concerned. My concerned deepend within a few moments as I started feeling this bruised sensation going down my left arm. That’s what promted the call to the hospital. They told me to come on in, as they’re “concerned”. Well that fueled my “concern” that I might be having a heart attack, where you’re in a state of near panic that either your heart is going to explode out of your chest, or sieze up and stop altogether.

So my wife and kids drive me to the Emergency Room just before midnight. I get put in a room, checked out, stabilized, blood drawn, etc.. It seems that there is an enzyme which appears in your blood after 8 hours which indicates whether you’ve had a real coronary ‘event’. So now it’s about 3:30am, my family has headed back home for some rest, and I’m lying in a hospital bed in a little room in the emergency area of the hospital. A nurse comes in, does some nurse stuff, and as she is leaving asks me if I’m hungry. I say yes, and as she turns down the hallway, I hear her yell, “I need a cardiac plate for room 13.” I’m thinking I’m gonna get water with dry toast and some carrots.

Instead, I got a plate filled with beef tips in brown gravy, mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli, a small salad cup with dressing, a fruit cup, and a juice. – And damn if that beef & gravy wasn’t really pretty darn good, as in surprisingly good. It sure wasn’t what I expected. – In the end, my blood test was normal, and I was ‘informed’ about irregular heartbeats, and we figured the bruising sensation in my arm must have just been coincidental due to my limited reptative motions of editing slides for hours on end.

Bat damn, that was some good food – for a “cardiac” plate. 🙂