I’ll skip most of the specifics of the three nights spent in the hospital. There was a little bit of sleeping the first night, interrupted every 15 minutes or so by the very un-soothing sounds emanating from the trucks at the hospital loading docks, located conveniently right outside our window. Our daughter came early the next afternoon, and we got even less sleep that night and the following one. I can’t blame our daughter for the lack of sleep. She slept right through those nights, choosing to wait until we got back home to start keeping us up throughout the nights. In the hospital, it was the never ending carousel of nurses and techs coming in the room every 30 minutes. Sunday night, our third night, the most talkative woman in America was assigned to be our nurse or tech (I forget which). Remember that we had been in the hospital for two-and-a-half days at that point and were beyond tired. This woman had no problem staying up and working through the night, and she was only too happy to explain this phenomenon to us in excruciating detail. Sometime late in the evening on one of her frequent visits she launched into a monologue about the fact that the sound of a neighbor’s loud dog did indeed bother her a great deal even though working late nights didn’t. I never quite got the connection but had absolutely no intention of asking her for clarification. Instead, as I lay on my semi-cushioned bench in the corner of the room I was torn between whether to focus my efforts on tuning her out and trying to sleep or darting across the room and smashing my wife’s tray of uneaten food into the wall in desperate protest.
That does bring me to the topic of the food, and this really must be addressed. God bless the poor, poor souls stuck in that hospital without friends or family to get them food to replace the cafeteria meals that are served to the helpless patients. I didn’t taste the food, but I did see it, and I believe it would have been right at home in the finest prison mess halls our country has to offer. I understand that providing gourmet meals is not the core mission of a hospital, but if you are going to charge 15 grand and keep people in your care for multiple nights, they really are owed better than a piece of chicken (I believe) that looks like it has been strenuously mashed flat and then left to dry for days on end.
Those are minor grievances, though, and the whole experiencing was truly life changing. I left the hospital with a new perspective and sense of purpose. You might be inclined to question just how powerful this new-found inner strength really is. It’s understandable, but your doubts should evaporate entirely when I tell you that after returning home from the hospital I managed to successfully watch all 135 minutes of Waterworld (though it did take me five separate sessions due to a combination of baby duties and revulsion to the movie). I'm going to add to my accomplishment by saving anyone who has had thoughts of watching this movie the trouble. Plot summary- Kevin Costner has gills; also he's a total jerk, but not as much of one as all the evil dudes that ride jet skis and are commanded by Dennis Hopper (truly heartbreaking that he participated in this travesty); everyone's looking for some land, because the earth is covered with water, which blows; Kevin Costner and a few lucky folks find it, right after Kevin Costner walks on to Dennis Hopper's giant boat and manages to blow it up after openly confronting Hopper and not getting shot by either Hopper or any of his approximately 2,000-3,000 minions on board.
Well, I guess this post ended up a bit all over the place. My apologies for that. I'll close out with a summary: birth of my daughter- good; watching Waterworld- bad. That is all.
Waterworld- Exellent preparation for the horrendous children's movies in my future
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