COUNTING THE HOURS

Do you ever stop to think about how many hours of your life you have spent doing something? Watching TV, eating, laughing, crying, certainly NOT exercising! I often think about things like this especially when I find myself in a situation that is unpleasant. That's when the hours drag by so slowly and it seems that time will never end.

Today I am reminded of just how many hours I have spent in hospitals. Way too many for my liking ! Up until I was in my 50's I don't think I spent any time in a hospital with the exception of having my tonsils out when I was 3, a memory that is still quite vivid in my mind. I remember that stay and the ride home as if it was yesterday. Pretty weird for a kid that young to remember at all never mind all these decades later.  I remember visiting an ER when I broke my arm when I was 6 but from that point on, with the exception of giving birth to 3 kids,  I did not set foot in a hospital until the late 1990's when shit hit the fan and I got to have several different surgeries over the next 10 years. I have become a pro at hospital visits and the whole pre-op and post-op procedures. I had actually come to "enjoy" my mini vacations of laying in a bed all day and being waited on. (Now if that isn't sick I don't know what is!)

With the dawn of a new century I discovered that going on a cruise could offer me the same perks as a hospital stay without the pain. DUH!

And yet there are those times when we can not avoid being in the hospital and as bad as it is being the patient I have found that I have spent as much time, if not more, being the "care giver" for the patient. I do not have a nursing degree nor did I ever want to be a nurse and yet I find that that God has seen fit to put me in the position of caring for someone who is ill and hospitalized. Thank you God that none of these persons was ever one of my children or grand children but I have been at the bed side of friends, husband, cousins, and others that I care deeply for. When one of these people get sick I can be found sitting in one of those horrid, uncomfortable chairs next to the hospital bed trying to do ANYTHING I can to make this poor person feel better. If ever there are days that drag by these days are the worst for me. Usually the patient in the bed is fortunate enough to have been given some "happy" drug so they are not feeling the slow tick tick of the HUGE clock on the wall. They don't even realize that I have been here with them for endless hours without food and am now considering  jumping out the 6th story window. Sitting there.is THE most boring day EVER. Happy tooth, the person in the bed, is oblivious of my presence UNTIL they need something. Then it is All Hands On Deck and get what ever is needed by any means needed. I can not tell you the things I have done in the name of "love" for this poor wretched soul who is sick but let me tell you that I better go straight to Heaven when my life is done. And there better be some one like me sitting next to my bed ready to pull out all the stops in order to make me comfortable.