Hospital Duty

I don't know of anyone who likes to stay in the hospital. After being in Fuda Cancer Center for a total of 7 weeks, I do not relish any remembrances of that time, except of course for the wonderful people I met. They made my stay bearable.

Two weeks ago, our son John had high fever (39 degress centigrade and higher) for 3 days straight. On the 4th day, I had him take a blood test and the results showed that his platelet level was low (87 when the lower limit is 150). This confirmed that he had dengue hemorrhagic fever which is caused by a mosquito. We had him admitted that Saturday as the doctor ordered. When we told John what was to happen, he only had 2 questions: Is there a TV in the hospital room and do they have cable? When I answered yes to both questions, he had a smile on his face like he was going on a holiday.

Let me tell you that in the Philippine culture, when someone is admitted, it is expected that a family member will act as a caregiver. The caregiver is always there to attend to the patient's immediate non-medical needs like helping him go to the bathroom, change his clothes, get him food, water, etc. Unfortunately, hospitals don't help in making the caregiver's life any easier. First of all, the caregiver is given a narrow cot for a bed. I took one look at the cot and knew that you should be only 4'10" in height to be able to fit on it. Since I am the shortest adult (5'3") in the family, I volunteered for hospital duty.

Secondly, the hospital makes sure that nobody gets a good 8 hours of sleep while confined. They wake the caregiver up at any time and expect them to be coherent enough to answer all their questions about the patient.

We stayed in a hospital room that had no windows or a clock. Since John was sleeping at odd hours, he never knew what time it was except when I was awake and he would ask me if it was morning, afternoon or night time. A nurse would come it at about 2:30 am, flip the lights on and cheerfully greet: Good morning! I have to take your blood sample. After she would leave, John would switch on the TV. What are you doing, I would ask. Mom, it's morning already. John its not even 3 am, turn that TV off and go back to sleep!

Another thing we had to get used to was having countless of people walk in and out of your room. There are untold number of nurses, nursing interns, nursing aides, doctors, residents, etc. It seemed like we never saw the same nurse twice in our 5 day stay at the hospital.

John's fever finally broke early Monday morning. The doctor informed us that this was the most crucial time because they expected his platelets to drop and we had to watch out for signs of bleeding, externally or internally. The doctor asked if he had rashes. John showed the doctor that he had a mild rash on his foot but did not complain about itching.

True enough, John's platelets dropped to 30. The doctor told us that although he had no fever, no bleeding and looked well, they could not discharge him until his platelets count will go up to 90. They had to draw blood from John twice a day to monitor this. On Tuesday, it had gone up only minimally to about 39. In my mind, the taxi meter was ticking faster. The longer we stayed in the hospital, the more expensive it was going to get! In the afternoon, the number had gone up to 47.

I was getting antsy. I knew that we had stayed too long in the hospital already. First of all, John started to like hospital food. During the first few days, he would look at his plate and ask me to identify what was on it. I looked at something that resembled a dirty maroon rag and told him it was corned beef. He looked at it hesitantly until I insisted that he eat it because we are paying for it. Now, he ate everything on his plate, including the overcooked vegetables.

Secondly, it felt like the cot I was sleeping on was getting shorter everyday. Either it was shrinking or I was growing taller.

Thirdly, I started to resent being woken up for the nth time during the night. One time at about 2 am, the nurse came in and told me that the doctor had prescribed an anti-histamine for John's itchy rash. I told her that he did not need it because it wasn't itchy at all. "But the doctor said..." we went back and forth for a while and then I said, "Why don't you just take it yourself!" and then rolled over and went back to sleep.

That was the last straw. I was turning into the big bad wolf! I was ready to devour the next nurse that would enter the room! Fortunately, morning came and so did the doctor with good news: John's platelets count was now over 100! I was never so happy to go home!

I was so looking forward to going to sleep in our large bed when Mandee came down with a 39 degree centigrade fever that night. After giving her a paracetamol and praying for her, I cringed at the possibility that she may also have dengue and would need hospitalization. Oh well, I comforted myself, at least I'll get to see "I love Raymond"on cable TV again!