Hospital observations

• It’s best not to have an emergency medical need on the evening an entire hospital moves to an all-new, digital charting system. 
• If “Real Stories of the ER” were a true reality TV program, it would be 8-10 hours viewing one 12-foot wall in an exam room. Of course, they’d have to air it in one-hour installments. And you’d beg for a commercial.
• A blanket warmer is one of the best things there is.
• The attending ER physician shared with us that his father also had GBM 20 years ago. Another compassionate brain buddy. We bonded.
• Hospital time is not of this world. I’m nearly 50 in human years and probably about 34 in hospital years. Maybe younger.
• If you discover the hospital unit pharmacy doesn’t stock the oral chemotherapy capsules your wife needs even though you filled the order at the oncology clinic next door and it’s after 11:30pm because you’ve been in ER all day, you need to drive home and get them.
• If it’s after 1:00am and the nurse tells you she needs to deliver the oral chemotherapy capsules you picked up at home to the hospital unit pharmacy so they can dispense them back to you, and then she recommends you give the hospital unit pharmacy only several doses and keep the rest, you should do that.
• If you wake up in the hospital recliner and realize you’ve fallen asleep because it’s the middle of the night and you’ve been in the ER all day and then you realize the hospital unit pharmacy hasn’t dispensed the chemotherapy capsules you drove home to get for them at midnight, and then you learn they’re not authorized to dispense chemotherapy capsules without orders from an oncologist and they don’t have orders from an oncologist because it’s the middle of the night, you should get your secret stash of chemotherapy capsules and give your wife her meds and tell yourself it’s okay to break lots of hospital rules because it’s after 5:00am and it’s the right thing to do, doggone it. That’s about all I have to say about that.
• Waiting in a hospital room for the team of specialists to make rounds so you can find out what they think is going on with your wife and how they plan to treat her is kind of like being on restriction.