Wobbly Legs, Bland Food and Nurses Who Giggle

I was still wobbling like a toddler when they moved me into a recovery unit at Huntington Memorial Hospital after my heart attack. My mind was still wobbly too. I kept asking the staff where all the books were. I thought I was in the Huntington Library.

In my new unit we were still regarded as subhuman, which I, at least, certainly was.

On the wall of my room was a set of RULES, printed in large black type.

The No. 2 rule was this: “Patients shall call the nurse for assistance out of bed until physicians and therapists deem patients safe to do so independently.”

This was a sound rule, as I was soon to demonstrate. Each bed was equipped with a small electronic switch box by which a patient could turn on his television set, raise or lower his bed or call his nurse. Nurses were supposed to respond immediately to this bell, and when I used it, they did.

On the second night, though, when I was still hardly more intelligent than a marsupial, I decided I was old enough to go to the bathroom without assistance. It was rather humiliating to have to be led. I had been going to the bathroom alone for many years.

I managed to work my way out of bed and began a precarious walk toward my destination. Alas, my legs betrayed me. With a great clatter, I fell into a trap of hospital equipment. I bruised my forehead, sprained a wrist and gave one elbow an abrasion that produced a scab as big as a dollar.

I was rescued by a nurse who scolded me as if I were a small child, which, of course, I was. The next morning when I awoke I had a restraining strap around one arm, preventing me from leaving my bed, and an orange band around one wrist identifying me as a dangerous patient.

I promised to be good, and the restraint was removed in a day or two. The orange warning strip, however, remained throughout my residence.

I pleaded that I had broken the rule only because my wife was not on the premises. After that she stayed in the hospital every night, sleeping on a cot in my room.

Usually she would dash home to have lunch, wash clothes, pick up the mail and feed the dog and five cats. Some nights she went out to dinner with friends, leaving me to survive on hospital food. Having already maligned the hospital unmercifully, I hesitate to add food to my list of its delinquencies. Everyone knows that hospital food is not haute cuisine.

I’m sure what I was served was nutritious, with measured amounts of calories and vitamins, but it was entirely without the spices and savories that make food palatable. The hospital is not to be blamed for this deplorable fact. The food was prepared to sustain life, not to enhance it.

Knowing it was good for me did not make it any better. My wife stood by me, virtually force-feeding me, until I had swallowed almost every morsel. The menu was heavy on all the things I don’t like--broccoli, spinach, squash, unseasoned meatloaf. Not an egg. Not a strip of bacon. It made me wonder whether life was worth living if one could not enjoy eating.

During my stay at the Huntington, my son Curt sent me a Dave Carpenter cartoon from the Wall Street Journal. It showed a man and woman sitting at the dinner table while their dog lay on the rug, evidently uninterested in scraps. The man is saying, “High fiber. No salt. Low cholesterol. No wonder the dog doesn’t beg anymore.”

Unfortunately, my wife has conscientiously attempted to duplicate the hospital diet at home. High fiber. No salt. Low cholesterol. No wonder I have no appetite and am down to 150 pounds. I look forward to her breakfast of bacon and eggs, even if the eggs are fake and the bacon is turkey.

She and I went to see my doctor early the other morning and afterward we had breakfast at the Fairway House, a little cafe on Lake in Pasadena. I had the No. 2 breakfast: one egg, two strips of bacon, hash brown potatoes and sourdough toast. It was heavenly.

I will say something good about the Huntington. The nurses are splendid. They were all quick, responsive and good-natured without being saccharine. They giggled at almost everything I said, even though it was often saturnine.

The one who gave me my bath, with a wet towel, was especially prone to laughter, though I don’t know what it was about my body that she found so funny. Maybe it was the little tic-tac-toe pattern left on my abdomen by my prostate surgery.

My wife gave the nursing staff two five-pound boxes of chocolates when we left. It must have seemed to them like finding flowers in the desert.