Basic Instinct

Okay, so turns out it was a very good thing indeed that my nursing instinct told me to go to the doctor last Saturday a.m.

Because one thing that definetely is downer to one's career is having a life threatening bowel perforation requiring immediate surgery in the middle of a shift.

I'm dramatizing, of course, but it could have very well happened if I had ignored my "Uh oh" barometer, as well as my "Oh crap!" indicator.

As it was, I ended up hospitalized over the weekend receiving massive doses of super antibiotics and "resting my bowel" which sounds like my intenstines won a free vacation to ClubMed but in reality is a typically arcane medical way of saying "We're not feeding you. At all." I spent most of the weekend and my entire Labor Day curled in a small, painfully hunched-up ball watching hours and hours and hours of Law and Order reruns and getting down with Kyra Sedgwick's earthy, southern Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson on TNT's mysteriously titled The Closer.

If I weren't busy retching my guts out (which was quite a feat, considering I hadn't anything to eat or drink except for contrast dye since Friday night) I would have tried to figure out what the hell the name of the show is supposed to mean, but I had more important business at hand--namely, keeping my cookies--or at least bile salts--where they belonged.

(Sidebar: I thought it was a bang-up good series, except I think they made a mistake by naming it something so esoteric you can't figure out what the show is about. Is it an abbreviation for "the closer to solving the crime, my dearie"? Just some postmodern corporate think tank's idea since easy titles like Cops and Law and Order are already taken? I must research answers to these questions. Some day, when I can walk more than a block without feeling nauseated and like my insides are going to collapse any second.)

Any hoo.

Suffice it to say I never want to be hospitalized ever again, and if I need it, someone please just throw me off a very tall building so as to negate the need for meaningful medical intervention.

For one, illness aside, sharing your room with a fussy little old lady who whimpers piteously and clears her throat every five minutes at night/if family is not in the room is not exactly restful or conducive to healing. Of course, neither is puking up your toes, but I digress. Secondly, when you've spent the night puking up your toes, the last thing you want the next day is The Entire Family Clan parading in and out of the room the entire day starting at 6:30 a.m. til 8:00 at night to visit Grandma, who could have gone home on Monday but played the invalid card so as to stay a day longer.)

And then there's the 3 a.m. urosepsis admission the next door over, who screams for an hour before settling down, having scared the shit out of the rest of us, even those battle hardened nurses such as myself. (If I was wigged out by the noise, I can only imagine how terrifying it must have been for everyone else.)

And the not-eating-or-drinking-thing.

And the whole sharing-a-bathroom thing, which frankly grosses me out.

I could go on, but I have to go back to being a proper invalid, eating oatmeal and toast. (I gimped through the supermarket this a.m. after hospital discharge and finally got a true window view into being ninety-five-years-old. I've decided to circumvent living that long and would be happy to go at the ripe old age of eighty. Thank you.)