The night of my hysterectomy, my morphine pump kept malfunctioning, and I wasn't getting morphine when I hit the pump, AND the alarm on it kept going off every 20 minutes. And I shared a room with an older woman, 50-ish, who was a moaner.

After the pump sitch got figured out, I still could pass out because of all her moaning really loudly ("OOOOOOOOHHHHHH IT HURTS AHHHHHH OHHHHHH") for the last three hours and I told the nurse who came in for a 3 AM check that I thought maybe something was wrong. Turns out she had a broken ankle and was also on a morphine pump. I was not very sympathetic after that, and finally snapped at 4:30 and hissed "Will you PLEASE be quiet!"

Silence, then "My foot hurts!"

"I just got my guts ripped out and didn't get meds for 3 hours because of this damned machine and did you hear me ONCE? And now I can't get to sleep."

"It hurts."

"I hurt worse. Please be QUIET."

She shut up. I'm not proud, but I was in a lot of pain even with the finally-working morphine and really tired at that point, and she was driving me batshit crazy. I wouldn't have snapped if she'd been old or a kid, and if I hadn't known it was a broken ankle that she was getting freakin' IV pain meds for.

I spent five days in a hospital one time, and it was really hard to fall asleep or stay asleep. I don't blame the staff, it's just hard for me to sleep in a hospital, being a person who's kinda hypervigilant even in normal times when I'm not possibly about to die. The nurses' desk was two doors down and I could hear the alarms going off and everything that was going on. The worst thing was, one night, the man in the room next to me died, apparently not totally unexpectedly, and his sister just lost her mind - running in and out of the room, screaming and wailing, slamming her hands on the wall, blaming the doctors. They finally gave her a sedative and put her in a room. Poor lady, but still, she woke everyone on the floor and scared the patients.

Yes, hospitals are not restful places and horrid for an insomniac, even with morphine. I was in for 3 days with the hyst, and when I got to my folks' house, I went straight to (blissfully silent) bed and slept 10 hours. I was exhausted. I had mostly really nice nurses, but they do have to wake you up for stuff, and the places are noisy.

Time for market! Well, soon, I'm not meeting the neighbors until 8:30. Then I'm thinking pedicure and some errands.

Trying to shake up my weekend schedule a bit, hopefully won't succumb to the siren call of napping cats.

I need to start figuring out what cookies to make for the thing in 6 weeks. I swear, this year WON'T involve fussy chopping or molding or filling or... I'll leave that to the Kats and Jules of the world. Last year's anzacs were good and I still have golden syrup and could do a variant of them easily, but 1) I try not to repeat and 2) oh god, chopping candied ginger, no.

I have a weakness for cookies with a little heat, thinking of chocolate+ a spicy liqueur. Somehow.

I'm off to the Catskills for another bout of cat-sitting, so depending on connectivity I may or may not be around online.

I'm realizing by the time I get back (less than a week) all my trees will have lost their leaves!

Timelies all!

I've been lucky. Haven't had an overnight stay in a hospital since I was 5 and had my tonsils and adenoids out. (I've had a couple of outpatient procedures, but that's it.)

I've never been a patient admitted to the hospital (since I was a newborn), but I have spent way too much time as a visitor over the past few months.

are hospital hallways ever actually dark??

Yes. In the NICU rooms they are dark all the time to simulate a womb, unless a baby is getting light therapy for jaundice. The outer hallway, by the sink etc, is dimmed too, but still pretty bright.

I need to defend hospital staff

Me too.

Every night I've had to stay with Grace (YES! She is is MRSA colonized which means contact isolation and no room sharing! Way to go extremely infectious, difficult to treat disease!) after a surgery has been difficult and people are in and out for patient care, but they try to remain quiet so Grace can sleep or so that I can sleep. Keep in mind, we are now on in the middle of year 4 of surgeries that happen every 10 weeks.

I will also silence alarms myself. When she's in a monitored bed, I just turn them off myself. If it shows up at the nurse's station and someone checks, that's fine. I will also turn off her IV infusions if they beep for more than a half hour or I will call the nurse and request that they either refill the bag or cap the IV.

The hardest overnights, weirdly, are the sleep studies.

are hospital hallways ever actually dark??

Yes. In the NICU rooms they are dark all the time to simulate a womb, unless a baby is getting light therapy for jaundice. The outer hallway, by the sink etc, is dimmed too, but still pretty bright.

I need to defend hospital staff

Me too.

Every night I've had to stay with Grace (YES! She is is MRSA colonized which means contact isolation and no room sharing! Way to go extremely infectious, difficult to treat disease!) after a surgery has been difficult and people are in and out for patient care, but they try to remain quiet so Grace can sleep or so that I can sleep. Keep in mind, we are now on in the middle of year 4 of surgeries that happen every 10 weeks.

I will also silence alarms myself. When she's in a monitored bed, I just turn them off myself. If it shows up at the nurse's station and someone checks, that's fine. I will also turn off her IV infusions if they beep for more than a half hour or I will call the nurse and request that they either refill the bag or cap the IV.

The hardest overnights, weirdly, are the sleep studies.

Ugh. So true, Jesse.