How did I feel about being in the hospital?

Last week I talked about my hospital stay.  I’m fine and was able to get back to training after a few days rest early in the week.  This week I wanted to reflect on the hospital stay.

How we feel about things that happen in life changes the way we see, understand, and feel about the things that happen to us.  Our actions based on those feelings can have a positive or negative impact on our immediate world.

I don’t like being a hospital patient.  I was at a good hospital but there are certainly things that could annoy me.  Hospital procedures and all that.

I did not bring my prescriptions and my over the counter meds in their original bottles, but in my weekly pill cases for day and night.  Therefore, hospital policy did not allow me to take my own medicine and none of my fiber, iron and such.  I took prescription meds from their stock.  But I had to skip my over the counter stuff for the few days I was in the hospital – not a long term problem.

They put me on a low salt and low fat diet, which makes sense since I’m on blood pressure and cholesterol medication.  However, with my medication, particularly my blood pressure medication, I eat closer to a normal diet.  (This is not because I’m a bad patient but because I know my body.  If I’m not stressed and if I’m eating a low salt diet my blood pressure will commonly drop so I’m light headed.  Changing bp medication is difficult and at times I do get stressed so my meds are required.  At home I check my bp twice daily.)  When I eat closer to a normal diet I have found I can regulate my BP very well with my meds – having done so for a very long time now.  (With my regular physician’s knowledge and approval.)

Anyway, my blood pressure dropped after the first day to my low range (nothing serious) on the low salt diet at the hospital.  They then decided to skip the dose next day and then my blood pressure was not as well controlled and ended up higher than I would have preferred (but again nothing serious).

Of course, it can be noisy in a ward with television blaring in the day, visitors talking, and patients moaning in pain at night.  Lights go on and off as nurses are called in during the night.  Night rounds and early morning rounds gives maybe 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep even if I was in a private sound proof room and could fall asleep immediately after last rounds.  I prefer 8 hours of sleep and more when I’m sick.  I got VERY little sleep on the first night.  6 hours was about the best I got during my stay.

All this could lead me to view my time at the hospital as a real pain in the backside.  I could have resented the nurses, hospital procedures, detested the food, and could have been about as miserable as I wanted to be.

And if I had decided to be miserable, frustrated, mad about the situation – even if I tried to hide it – it would have begun to make my immediate world a little more miserable.  The nurses, cleaning staff, and others would begin to react to my negative signals.  I would make their lives more difficult.  As my stay continued it would have been even easier for my situation to be more miserable and frustrating as they reacted to my feelings and I reacted to theirs.  My health would have suffered.

And I certainly could have gone down that road.  Actually, I took a few steps on the path when I was sleep deprived on my first morning.  Fortunately, I caught myself.

A Peace Corps volunteer in particular should learn to take a step back and see how their view of what is happening impacts how they are see what is happening.  Cultural understanding is not always easy and cultural misunderstandings can make life really difficult.

Looking at how you are looking at something before making a judgement provides a great opportunity to learn more about yourself and others and another culture.

Therefore, instead of relaxing into misery I made a concerted effort to be happy about the situation, to say nice things to people, to at least have a smile on the outside, and generally tried to relax even if I was at times frustrated or whatever.

Overall, the results were that people who came were happy to see me and made me a little happier – the small world around me was a little happier than it might have been.

Of course, there are very hard, difficult, unfair, horrible things that happen and a positive view will not wallpaper over the problems in the world that need to be solved.  But there was little I could do about the hospital policy, food, etc. so I made the best of it.

I’m not recommending that you accept and make nice the things in the world that you can improve – I would not be a Peace Corps volunteer if I thought that way.  Please improve those things in your world that you can change.  Just don’t let what you can’t change make you overly miserable.  It’s not good for your health and not good for the world.

I am recommending that you examine the way you look at the world and possibly change your attitude about things so that you and others have a nicer life living in a nicer world.

And that is why I wanted to write this blog:  We all, each day, do things to make the small world around us a little happier or more miserable, loving or hateful, etc. depending on how we act.  And how we act is based on how we view our world.    Make it a better one – love always.

Next week:

This week coming up I’ve got model school – a one week period to demonstrate teaching abilities.  I hope to have another post next week, but it might be delayed slightly.

I had to tape each letter, so they are a little bit off.

Getting the class ready for next week - model school training with our under the sea theme.

Love always,

John