Combatting Hospital Boredom

Ah, the hospital. Where one is sent to rest and recuperate. Yeah, right. Between the noises, the smells, the awful beds, the tests, and the weird schedules, rest can be very elusive. Sleep dances before one like a demented fairy, just out of reach. And boredom sets in.

Daytime television only takes one so far. Books can be difficult to hold. Walking the same loop over and over and over stunts one’s desire to ever walk again. So what to do, with limited mobility and resources but infinite time?

Should you ever require hospitalization, go prepared to deal with boredom. It will happen. Here are my top suggestions for taming the annoying beast:

If you can get a hospital gown, don't close the back and go for a walk. Drop items in strategic places so as you retrieve them you moon staff members/visitors/other patients who annoy you.

Order a nice Chateaubriand with your meal tray. Request an after supper brandy.

If you are in the ER in an exam room and haven't seen anyone in a while, move around the room opening every cupboard and drawer and looking inside. I don't know how they know, but this will bring someone in to check on you quickly.

Obtain a stuffed toy or Teddy Bear. Insist the staff perform all procedures on your stuffie as well as you. Carry on conversations with said stuffie. It is helpful if it is named something along lines of "Gerard" or "Your Majesty". This has the added benefit of bringing in a psych evaluator. And they are REALLY fun to mess with.

Mine is a sheep called Rosemary.

Every time you hear an alarm sound, shout "He shoots! He scores!" really loudly.

Ask a nurse or orderly to help you find the cat channel on the television.

Fun things to do with jell-o (in case you have the misfortune of being served this): mix with mashed potatoes to make a lovely coloured substance. "Draw" pictures with it, using a knife to spread. If in cubes, stack cubes and begin gently wiggling the tray, slowly increasing the strength and speed of the wiggle until the tower topples; experiment with various structures to find the longest-standing. Suck a bit up into a straw and then aim & blow hard and fast on the straw at a specified target.

Carefully tear pictures or quotes out of exceedingly old magazines from the waiting room or Day Room. Make a collage using plasters or medical tape as adhesive. Hang the collage on the wall directly across from the nurses' station.

Remove every pad, diaper, and cloth you can from the cupboard in your room (or a passing cart). Fashion these together into a general body shape. Place this creation in your bed, under the covers, and attach yourself to the tail end of the medical student/intern rounds. When discovered and told to return to bed, protest loudly: "But there's someone else in my bed!" (Again, this will bring in a psych evaluator....)

Request a bedpan, otherwise known -- for some reason I have never discerned -- as a "hat" (when used on a toilet to collect urine). Wear said bedpan on your head every time you use the toilet. Keep a running list of how long it takes each staff member to get the joke.

And my favourite: rearrange flowers to match your or other patients' medical conditions. Heart condition? All red. Nausea? Green and yellow. Orthopaedic surgery (with bruising)? Blue, black, green, and yellow. You get the idea. It might have been the drugs I was on at the time, but coming up with colour-coded flower arrangements for various medical conditions once kept me happily engaged for an entire day.

Boredom will do that to a person.

Bland, Thick, & Lumpy OR Death By Low Residue

Lord, have mercy.

I do not like bland food. I mean, I really do not like bland food. My mother discovered my penchant for spicy food when I was only two and I single-handedly ate almost an entire bowl of chile con queso she had made for a party. At age five or six we were eating supper when I noticed the meat was different and asked, "What kind of meat is this?" (It was venison procured by my father.) In a fit of God-only-knows-what-he-was-thinking my father answered, "It's Bambi." According to both my parents I merely blinked my eyes once before pronouncing, "Bambi tastes good," and cleaning off my plate with relish.

When I was pregnant with Boo I ate pretty much anything and everything I wanted. The only food which regularly made me sick was plain, un-spiced chicken breast. For some reason people kept serving this to me under an assumption that I could not eat normal food while pregnant. I ended up throwing it all up every. single. time. Bland food and I do NOT get along.

Fast forward to today, three and half weeks post-op after my latest Fun-Filled Hospital Extravaganza, and I am on a low residue diet.

The makings of a typical low residue meal. Yee haw.

A low residue diet, for those of you who have never had the privilege of experiencing one, is a diet designed to both lessen the frequency and thicken the consistency of one's output. By which I mean this: thicker poop and fewer instances of messing one's self. Yes, it is definitely as fun as it sounds.

The reason I'm on this diet is because I had a pouch advancement on June 26th (they cut loose my J-pouch and pulled it down into my rectum) in order to (hopefully) deal once and for all with the @#!$% fistula I've been fighting for the past three years. This was part one of a two-surgery procedure. (For those keeping score, surgeries 12 and 13.) I then had to wait around in the hospital for two weeks, almost completely incontinent -- yes, that was as much fun as it sounds, too! -- until the second procedure on July 10th. During this procedure the ends of the pouch were trimmed and fully stitched in place. Voila! One exceedingly sore hiney and a LOT of poop to contend with.

So. Here is a list of food & beverage options I get to choose from daily: oatmeal, white rice, potato, white pasta, white bread, decaf tea, water, multi-vitamin juice (one small glass per day), Actimel (also one per day), plain meat, very small amount of cheese, banana, applesauce, and avocado. As a treat I can have a tiny bit of hummus on plain crackers, and later today I might try some beets, as I've been handling the banana, applesauce, and avocado without too many problems. Woo hoo, party time!

For extra excitement, I also get to drink a glass of water mixed with Questran-A three times a day, before each meal. This is a powdered medicine which works in the gut to cut down on the acidity of poop, hence helping to cut down on both urgency and hiney pain. (Do not be fooled: Butt Burn is no laughing matter.) This is a good thing. The yucky thing is that while the powder is completely tasteless, it makes the water thick. And lumpy. Thick, lumpy water three times a day. Yum. Boo & Little Toot have taken to counting how long I can keep from gagging after each glass; so far my record is three seconds.

This combination of bland, thick, & lumpy is slowly getting to me, folks. Fair warning: if you don't see me for a while, check the corners to see if I'm sitting in one, quietly sobbing while trying to down a glass of Questran-A enriched water. If I'm not there or, of course, in the bathroom, then I am afraid I might have wasted away. Please make sure my tombstone is engraved with the following: "Here lies Feisty. She survived Ulcerative Colitis, fistulas, 13 surgeries, and innumerable side effects but was finally finished off by Gastronomic Boredom. May she rest in peace and enjoy that Great Baked Brie in the Sky."

The Things Come to Town

If you haven't ever checked out Ironic Mom, you really should go do that now.  It's one of my daily regulars, a site that helps keep me sane by assuring me that I'm not the only one living La Vida Loca.  (Try starting with two of my favourite posts: the one about stripper Barbie and the one about being sexy.)  Recently Ironic Mom's little Things (the alter egos of her twins, William/Thing 1 & Vivian/Thing 2) stopped by as part of their whirlwind world tour, and we treated them to some typical aspects of life here in the Netherlands.  Hopefully we didn't traumatize them too much, but I wouldn't bet on it...

The Things arrived the evening before my scheduled stoma reversal, so they were tucked into bed early to rest up for the big op the next day.  Next morning they accompanied me to the hospital and were ushered into the spacious 4-bed room I would be sharing with various and sundry noises and smells people. They were thrilled with the view out the window, especially catching a glimpse of Fort SintPieter, which I assured them we could visit after the ordeal was over.

We then unpacked, loading up the bedside table with post-op essentials such as lip balm, tissues, good books, and trashy magazines.  The Things happily settled into the bed, much agog with my stories of tea served in real china, staff people who tend the gift bouquets brought in, and proper duvets to sleep under.

They were less than thrilled, however, when the nurse came with the gown to change into as they realized that my warning "if the Dutch are comfortable with nudity in the situation they think you are as well" was all too true.  They quickly devised a scheme to retain their modesty:

The amount of laughter and ribald comments which greeted them soon changed their minds.  They decided "when in the Netherlands, do as the Dutch" was a good policy, combined with a bit of "see no evil":

After this happy compromise we settled down to wait.  And wait.  And wait.  When the transport came to take me down, they blew kisses and wished me well, looking forward to some uninterrupted channel surfing.  When I was brought back up not too much later in a considerably foul mood they were irritated along with me that the op had been bumped.  We threw our stuff into our bag, went home, and drowned our sorrows in chocolate.

Next day we headed over to the dog park at Sint Pieter's.  The Things were a bit worried by the chill wind and the signs of rain in the sky and asked to stay in the car.  We had to be very strict and Dutch with them, saying, "Jullie zijn niet van zuiker gemaakt!"  (You are not made of sugar!)

At first they hitched a ride along with Boo.

But after a bit, seeing how much fun everyone was having running around, they chose to ride along with Bubba.

They had a grand old time, and got to see Fort SintPieter (relatively modern at 1701) up close and personal along with Boo, Bubba, and F.

Our next big outing was to Efteling, the Dutch amusement park which inspired Disney Land.  The Things happily trucked along with Boo and Little Toot, oohing and ahhing at all the rides.

We hoped a fast ride on the wooden roller coaster Joris en de Draak ("Joris and the Dragon") would fluff out their hair but, alas and alack, it didn't.  It was a lot of fun anyway!

They greatly enjoyed wandering the beautifully landscaped grounds; what could be more Dutch than tulips and windmills?

All the walking and screaming on rides gave the Things quite an appetite, so we stopped off for a snack of fritjes (french fries) before leaving.

Thing 2 preferred the curry ketchup, but Thing 1 was partial to the mayonaise (pronounced mah-o-naze-uh).

A few days later was Queen's Day, a nationwide party in honor of Queen Beatrix.  The Things jumped right into the spirit, cross-dressing up (always guaranteeing a laugh in the Netherlands) in orange for the big party in downtown Maastricht.

Like all good Dutch citizens, we bicycled downtown.

We joined right into the throngs of people laughing, dancing, selling things, performing, chatting.  The Things' favourite was the drum band.

We were also able to share the spectacular view of the Maas, with stunning new pedestrian bridge and the older drawbridge in the background:

The Helpoort ("Hell Gate", 13th century), the oldest city gate in the Netherlands, was a big hit as well:

All this Dutch-ness was fun, but a bit overwhelming.  The Things began to feel homesick, so that evening we gave them our latest copy of Our Canada to read and played some Tragically Hip for them to listen to:

The next adventure was my operation, which miraculously took place as scheduled this time around.  The Things were very comforting in their post-op sympathy, joining me with bandages, tea, and warm compresses:

On their last full day with us the weather was gorgeous so we decided to go on a nice country wandeling (walk).  We went to the top of one of the local plateaus (this is the southern Netherlands!) to check out the wildflowers in bloom.

The Things recognized Queen Anne's Lace from back in Canada right away and had a little frolic in the Forget-Me-Nots as well:

Check out that amazing blue!  (Oh, and the flowers are also pretty...)  Next was hunting up native wild orchids which grow here in Limburg.  The Things were thrilled to find two varieties, a pale lilac orchid:

and a brighter fushia-purple one:

We admired the views from top of the plateau together, with the city of Maastricht in the distance:

Then it was time to head home, for our last meal together.  We made it a celebration and served up a traditional Dutch springtime supper: white asparagus and boiled potatoes with a creamy butter sauce, ham, boiled eggs, and applesauce.  The Things loved the "Dutch White Supper" as Boo & Little Toot call it.

All in all, it was a fun visit and a very pleasant distraction for me through the process of this last surgery.

The Things are now off on their next adventure, but you can continue to follow them along via the Ironic Mom website.  Het was een leuk tijd, Thing 1 en Thing 2; hartelijk bedankt en tot ziens!