Go to the hospital, and leave ’em laughing
Vacaville was so close, I could taste the mall food. There is magic in Vacaville, magic you might not fully appreciate. I wanted to write about it here but about 3 miles outside of this surprisingly worthy destination, my husband called to alert me that he was in an ambulance and being taken to San Francisco General Hospital. Again.
This is the third time since our 2017 wedding and the second time since our 2018 baby that my beloved Humpty Dumpty of a spouse has landed his broken body in the emergency room. Motorcycles do not agree with him, and as I write this several floors down from his current broken leg surgery, I think the feeling is finally mutual.
He’ll be fine and I am one step closer to receiving my gold star in San Francisco hospital waiting room expertise. If you’re someone like me, doomed to prove the “in sickness and in health” vow every few months, I have wisdom to share. Hospital food, waiting rooms, inroom companion cots: I’ve done it all. Here’s what I’ve learned:
UCSF Mission Bay is the RitzCarlton of hospitals. I gave birth during a workers’ strike and it was still pure luxury compared with any other medical facility. Dinner for patients and guests is ordered from an eclectic menu presented on a bedside iPad. Chicken curry, pepperoni pizza and frozen yogurt? Send it on up! Airplanequality films are available on massive flat screens and every inroom couch converts into a halfway decent twin bed.
Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital is not the RitzCarlton of hospitals, despite Mark Zuckerberg tossing his name all over it. S.F. General is, however, San Francisco’s only trauma center, and it’s where they take people who keep crashing their motorcycle. Patients must hold a speaker box to their ear to hear the television, much as if one had attended the de Young Museum’s Monet audio tour while lying on a gurney. There is no patient menu — you just get the vintage green beans they deliver. Guests are sent to the icy cafeteria, home to extremely limited culinary offerings. And despite its redesign, S.F. General still looks haunted.
We never spent the night at St. Francis Memorial Hospital, but it’s where they put my husband’s clavicle back together. Whatever version of a cafeteria they have at St. Francis was closed during his surgery so I walked a block to Trader Joe’s and returned with snacks. Bad artwork had fallen from its place on the surgical waiting room wall, and no one had bothered to rehang it. Clearly, when the room was last repainted, someone chose to simply paint around the artwork. The square of old wall color surrounded by new wall color was mesmerizing. Luckily, this decorative shortcut was not an indication of the facility’s surgical practices.
St. Francis was also where I was (rightly) chastised for throwing a plastic bottle in a garbage can. Embarrassed, I tried to take the bottle back from the garbage can while a livid recovery room nurse announced to everyone on Hyde Street that I was now contaminated.
UCSF Parnassus has become our home away from home. It’s where I am now, working from the cafeteria’s warmly lit dining area. There are hints of those UCSF Mission Bay modern touches, like the inroom iPads and surgical update texts. There seem to be far fewer patients than medical staff here. I imagine many of these gorgeous young geniuses surrounding me are medical students, busy saving lives while I scroll Instagram.
This hospital is close to amenities like nail salons. I can leave my motherinlaw to pray in the waiting room while I get a manicure. We are, after all, dealing with a broken bone, and for the third time in two years, I’m helping my husband through a long recovery. I’m getting a (insert expletive) manicure.
The only real skill I can bring to these circumstances is humor. I’ve lost my patience, I’ve cried the ugly cry, I’ve snapped at my husband for needing his painkillers while I try to feed a baby at 2 a.m. I screw up my “in sickness and in health” vow hourly. But I’ve made just about every doctor chuckle and every nurse laugh. I keep it light in the face of general anesthesia. We’ve found humor in what often feels like bad luck. And in doing so, I think we remind ourselves how lucky we really are. Not lucky enough to make it to Vacaville this week, but lucky just the same.
The only real skill I can bring to these circumstances is humor . ... I’ve made just about every doctor chuckle and every nurse laugh.