Just shut up already

Here’s a tip folks, if you’re in a hospital day-stay unit try to talk softly. Use your inside voice. Oh you think that I’m not talking to YOU, but I am. I really am. I don’t want to be lying in a hospital bed waiting for surgery and finding out who’s living with whom and who’s not gonna have the grades to make it out of community college. I don’t want to know if you thought that Susie’s wedding was too ostentatious for your tastes.

You think this doesn’t happen; oh but it does. There I was lying alone in my little curtained off hospital bed reading my Tom Brokaw book and I couldn’t even focus on the depth of his feelings about the Vietnam War because of the loud distraction two beds away from me. From what I could tell it was a mom and her two adult children (a man and a woman) and boy could they yak.

Mom was clearly going in for hip surgery and to have some hardware removed from her knee that was no secret to anyone in a 100 foot radius. Then there was Steve and his issues with community college, good LORD that boy had better shape up and fast because he’s got that girlfriend movin’ in with him and she’s expecting big things from him and what he can provide.

At times I felt like chiming into the conversation since they were actually wrong on a couple of points and I felt the need to correct them but I kept my big mouth shut. I figured once I jumped into that pool I wasn’t gettin’ out without a life raft.

My nurse was wonderful, truly a saint and at one point she popped over to check on me. I motioned her over and whispered that those people were REALLY LOUD. She said they were the talk of the nurses’ station…and the nurses’ station was NOT nearby. Their nurse had politely asked them to tone it down twice and they never lowered the volume even one decibel so an executive decision was made to move “mom” to the pre-surgery holding area where no visitors were allowed. My nurse assured me that when I got there in an hour “mom” would still be waiting for her surgery but they had to do something. I can only imagine how loud bro’ and sis must’ve been in the family waiting area.

I must admit I thought this was brilliant and sure enough when I was brought into the holding area before my surgery I was there for mere minutes but “mom” was still there. They had told her that her doctor had suddenly gotten tied up in the previous surgery and they couldn’t bring her back to pre-op. I know that I must’ve gone under the anesthesia with a grin on my face.

I realize that a hospital is not exactly a church or a funeral home, BUT, even in the happiest of areas (let’s say the maternity ward) remember that you are in a public place, keep it down folks.