While a trip to the hospital is rarely pleasant, here are some tips to help you prepare for the experience:
- Before entering a hospital for treatment, weigh your holistic health-care options against your wish to actually get better.
- If you have a wok at home, it's a good idea to get some bedpan practice before the pressure is on.
- Some drugs react violently with alcohol; some don't. Ask around.
- If you are going to the hospital for treatment of a severed limb, remember to bring the limb.
- Bring your regular medications with you to the hospital. God only knows where the hospital finds theirs.
- Read a couple of Newsweek articles about your condition. This information will allow you to second-guess your doctor's every move.
- Be forewarned: Hospitals apply a vast mark-up to the items in the in-room minibars.
- Wear clothing that is loose-fitting and comfortable, yet appropriate to bleed in.
- If you behave like a brave little soldier, you may be offered ice cream.
- Whatever you do, don't check into any facility called "General Hospital." That place is full of back-stabbing, narcissistic lunatics.
- Pack several extra pairs of slippers. Slippers in the hospital are like cigarettes in prison.
- Before knocking out an intern and stealing his uniform, make sure he's your size.
- Many patients complain that hospitals cut their stay short. Don't be coerced into signing out until you're dilated to 10 cm and the baby's head can be seen.
- Bring $500 in fives to "grease the wheels," if you get my meaning. The good mashed potatoes.
- If bruised, find a hospital known to have a good bruise ward.
- Keep in mind that, today, many procedures can be performed on an outpatient basis. Some can even be done outside.
- When you arrive at your hospital room, decide which item you'd be willing to accept as the final thing you see on this earth.
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