The ER and Me...we're tight.

Yesterday I had a surprise return to the Emergency Room. Yes, this makes two times in under a month for the same damn thing. After checking in, I sat in a waiting room until they took me back to a room to await torment treatment. I stayed in this Hospitacular Hotel for three and a half hours.

Now, I don't think I'm normally anal retentive about cleanliness, but I did just blog about it yesterday and I DID have three and a half hours of fun fun waiting time to take note of my surroundings.

Maybe it's me, but aren't hospitals supposed to be big on the germ-free thing? I mean, I know that if you tend to get sick, staying away from one is probably a great idea, but if you're in one, isn't the idea to be as sterile as possible?

What we have here, is a "Sterile FAIL" blog. Take my hand. Let's have a look at my temporary digs, shall we?

Photo 1: This is my room. First thing I notice as I walk in. Hmm. There's schmutz on the floor. But I think, "Okay, this is an ER room. They have a lot of "E"s in and ER room and therefore there could be some lingering items from the war of recovery. Okay. I can deal."


Photo 2: I'm sitting on the gurney. What do I notice? Oh, those two pieces above, why, they are band aid wrappers. Ew. But okay, it's not like they are actual bandages. No, they are discarded plastic pieces that keep the "sticky" on the sticky part of the band aid. Not my idea of good cleaning practices. I mean, one piece dropping to the floor, okay. But two? C'mon guys, you aren't even trying.

Still. This is an ER room. The good doctors and nurses are in a hurry and clearly someone needed immediate seepage stoppage so STAT that the wrappers fell unnoticed. Poor soul. Hope he/she/it's okay.

Photo 3: I look on the other side of the gurney. And find wrappers. Huh. Gum and candy have been eaten here. Maybe the bleedy one was a child. Maybe they spent three and a half hours in the ER room and got...the nibbles! Yeah, that's it. Munchies, they happen. I know after I've been wounded in a battle requiring a small band aid that I too get starving (okay, I don't, but I'm being understanding here).

Photo 4: So I begin to wonder about this spreading inability for people to use the garbage can. Maybe it's missing. It's not. It's just out of view of this next shot, where we see a peanut M&Ms wrapper and a urine collection cup label.

Some one was not only hungry but had to pee and wanted the nurse to know who it was from. Although it does beg the question, why didn't this get swept up. Surely this isn't castoff from the same person?
Photo 5: I glance at the photos I've taken and see from the first one, there is something under my gurney. Huh? I get off and lean over. Well, would you look at that? Someone generously left me half a bottle of Pepsi. I hate Pepsi and it's a bit hidden, but plain as day, it's under my gurney.

I'm beginning to have serious doubts about the hospital cleaning staff. Hell, I'm having serious doubts about how sanitary my room is and if I should actually wait out the doctor or take my chances, untreated, at home.

Nervously, I sit back down and look around some more. Eye scanning. Why? Because what if I find something truly horrific? Like blood spatter or something?
Photo 6: *sigh* blood spatter. Right beside the gurney. And if not blood, it's definitely body fluid. Now, this is a sucky picture, but this trail of human leak goes all the way to the door from the gurney. There's a large smear on the blue/green portion, a spot on the mottled color. Actually there are two on the mottled color, but it's not showing up in this frame.
Photo 7: By the sink across from me, I see another wrapper and cut tubing. It looks like the tubing from an IV. Sliced and left right there. Just for me. In an 8 x 10 room, they missed this much? I can practically FEEL the staph infection climbing up from my toes...
Photo 8: I begin to wonder how sterile the gloves are and I see this... the cap to a syringe. Theoretically these are sterile. I choose to ignore it and hope there isn't something unsavory lurking in the "sterile" glove boxes. I don't check...in case you were wondering. I'm afraid to.
Photo 9: Just realized I forgot to show you the, um, space technology used for this garbage can. Also the black cone for looking in someone's ear or nose. It ALMOST made the can. What it is definitely doing? Leaving it's "other patient goo" on the floor.
Photo 10: My eyes drift up from the can to the counter. This time I notice that the "Sterile wipes" have been left open. Presumably the stuff in the wipes can kill bacteria, so maybe the fact that one of those canisters is open air access, isn't so bad...? I'll just ask them to use a wipe from the other one. I'll also pretend that it has remained closed since the beginning of time.

I'm not having a lot of faith in my fabrication though.
Photo 11: Well, that answered the question, didn't it? If there is a band aid wrapper on the floor, what happened to the band aid??? AH! It got stuck on the doctors wheeled stool, of course!

I think I'm going to puke. First, I have to be sure.
Photo 12: Yep. Definitely bandaging. The see through kind. All caught up in the doc's wheel housing and available for rolling all over the floor. Kind of like a dog peeing to mark territory. Niiiiiiice.

Photo 13: I lie down, determined not to look around the room anymore. There's an air vent just to my left. I don't know if you can see this, but the holes in the wire covering are almost completely clogged with dust and filth. It's been ages since that was cleaned. I decide to hold my breath.

Photo 14: I text Bronwyn. I can't believe the horror of this place. I tell her how my hospital gown (the open in back gowns? Yeah those. I've been naked for about three hours at this point and I hate it.) smells. It has body odor. I also tell her about how I thought it was me and maybe I'd forgotten to wear deodorant, although I can't imagine that. I'm pretty particular about body odor on me.

I took the robe off, and give myself a sniff. I smell fine. In fact, I smell like the Arrid XXdry fresh scent I wear without a hint of pew. Then I smell the gown and it REEKS of strong, vile, body odor. Like someone hadn't showered in a couple of days and wiped his pits on the robe.

Except I was wearing it and wasn't it supposed to be CLEAN? I take another look around the room. What the fuck was I thinking? *headslap* These people don't know clean! They're supposed to, but they seemed to have missed the "sterile environment" class in med school.

Bron and I are both disgusted. I joke about how I haven't checked the sink yet and I was a little afraid of what I'd find. We laugh. We hang up.

I walk over to the sink. Surely here it would be clean. They wash their hands here and this of all places should be the bastion of hygiene!

Alas....
Hair and garbage.

I think they're trying to kill me.

things i didn't need to know

Craptasm of mega proportions with the business trip. Do you know what it's like to have to share a room (all right, not a room but there was a door separating our rooms so technically it's the same damn thing) with your boss? Your much older, farty boss who likes to hang his faded-assed boxers on his shower rod (NOT a euphemism) because the genius monkey forgot to pack clean underwear and now you know the man went at least two days commando?

I should have called his wife. Instead, I gouged my eyes out with the nasty toe nail clippings he left on his high-gloss dresser. WTF?!

You're probably wondering what I was doing in the man's bathroom. I swear, it wasn't anything illegal or naughty. Trust me, it sure as HELL wasn't naughty. Now if it had been the creamy deliciousness of my supervisor and not the boss-man faux manager type, I'd have had a sexy red nighty on. And in that fantasy, supervisor hotness would have been commando everyday and healthy but trim nails. HE would not have left his skid-mark ass prints hanging in the restroom when I HAD TO GO and the maid needed the room. I know we could have had our meeting elsewhere... and WOULD have if it had been planned instead of impromptu, "Mia, I'm an asstastic skid marking commando sporting toe-infected-with-some-unknown-fungus-of-sunshine-yellow-ew who can't remember where he put the BlahBlah Company files we need in zero point three seconds".

Instead, I am now completely sightless and suffering from PTSD featuring waking nightmares of boss-man's bid'ness sprouting mushroom head fungus to match his gnarly toes.

I'm just saying.

And because I love you all so much and have been unavoidably away, here is an extra day to comment and submit your names in for a the basket drawing... yes, even if you already did so earlier. I'm a giver.