You can be discharged from the hospital if the hospital personnel observes that they have done everything possible they can for you e.g. operated on you, gave you medicine and provided you with physiotherapy, and you can perform self-help skills e.g. eating, walking and toileting independently. Then, physically, you are ready to go home.
However, some people chose to remain hospitalised. Why?
One patient told me that in the hospital, she gets more than three decent meals i.e. breakfast, morning tea-break, lunch, afternoon tea-break, dinner and supper. Besides the distinction of halal (for Muslim patients on religiious grounds) or non-halal food, rice or porridge or on the drip or nothing (if you are preparing for an operation), the menu varies everyday. A main meal like lunch or dinner comprises: rice with vegetables, a meat item and a soup. There is dessert too. Tea-break is usually crackers with a drink like "Milo", barley, ginger water or milk.
With windows on one side of the wall and an overhead fan per bed, the hospital ward is airy. For me, that translates to bright and breezy. For some lucky souls, like myself, we even get a window view, which sometimes we do not even get if we work in a windowless office, like I do.
The room service is superb. You just have to press the buzzer and the nurses are at your beck and call. You get the bed-linen changed everyday. (How many of us get that kind of service back home?) You change your hospital uniform everyday but are spared doing the laundry. Life is even better than having a maid at home. There was a patient who took up a lot of many people's time and energy because she was practically commanding everyone when things go slightly out-of-sync e.g. she complained her buzzer was not working; she fell off the bed the previous day; the chemotherapy treatment will make her blind!
If you are a social animal, there are other people to talk to e.g. doctors, nurses, student nurses patients, cleaners, caterers, physiotherapists. If you can walk to the patients' lounge, you can even watch television programmes!
For some patients, they get visitors and sympathy. Their family members, friends and colleagues are especially kind during this period.
All this attention, like painkillers, can be addictive. Therefore, it is harder for them to be prepared mentally and emotionally to leave the hospital if they are starved of attention back at home.
5:40 PM
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