THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
A Widow Bit – April 26, 2009
By Mary Koch

             The heavy glass doors open automatically with a “whoosh” that sweeps me inside. I’m Alice through the Looking Glass. Or am I Dorothy in Oz? What is it about hospitals that overpowers me, creates a heaviness in my soul, turns me into someone I don’t want to be?

            I walk down a long hall with brightly framed lists of names, the “Baby Hall of Fame.” If I were visiting the hospital to see a newborn, I would feel differently. Hospitals would symbolize new life. But for me, for too long, hospitals have stood for mortality and vulnerability. Hospitals are where not only patients, but their loved ones, lose all pretense of power, control and independence.

            Enter these doors and we are subject to the system. We are not in charge. That’s all it takes to bring out the fighter in me.

            “Oh, yeah?” I counter. 

            I represent myself as the patient’s advocate, but sometimes I suspect the more appropriate label is hospital adversary.

            This week’s hospital visits were on behalf of my mother, who spent a couple days at Tacoma General, though it didn’t matter which hospital it was. They’re strikingly similar with their latte stands, walls of plaques honoring donors, glitzy gift shops, color-coded loudspeaker announcements and bustling cafeterias.

            If you want to see a democratic cross-section of humanity, go no further than a hospital cafeteria. You’ll find all sizes and shapes, economic and social strata, colors, nationalities and religions. In illness, we’re all the same.

            I recently read a magazine article that the economy is closing down hospital construction across the country, but not at TG. From Mother’s room I watched the construction crane hauling materials nonstop to the upper floors of a new emergency wing. You could hear hammers on metal: “BOOM! BOOM! The boomers are coming.” Make room for the aging generation.

            Mother was on the sixth floor – the best floor in the hospital, a nurse had promised us. Recently remodeled in rich wood tones, the décor rivaled that of a first-class hotel, the noise level blessedly low.

            Instead of the traditional nurses’ station with stacks of charts, nurses and doctors sit at long rows of desks, each absorbed by a computer screen. There’s a computer in each patient’s room, too. By my subjective guesstimate, time spent interfacing with computers vs. actually eyeballing the patient is 3:1 at best.

            Mother was there for pain management. By Friday, after numerous procedures – many painful – she was to be discharged “as soon as we do an X-ray.”

            I knew the X-ray would cause more discomfort.

            “Will X-ray findings change her treatment?” I asked.

            “No. It’s just for our records.”

            I stared silently at the nurse. I wonder; was it my advocate or adversary stare?

            “You’re right,” she said. “There’s no need.”

            So, we were out the door. Whoosh. Back in the real world. Or not. On which side of the glass is the real world?