Visiting 101

I think I'm going to start a bedrest handbook.
Chapter One - Visiting Tips

TIP ONE - USING THE PHONE
If you are going to visit the hospital, please call and tell the "patient" when you are going to come.

TIP TWO - FIGURE OUT AN APPROXIMATE WINDOW OF TIME
Try to avoid calling at 9am on Saturday before you start your day of whirlwind errands and tossing off "I’m thinking of coming to see you today" and then:
a) never showing up
b) showing up 7 hours after you called and assuming that the first call was sufficient notice.
A nurse explained this phenomenon to me. Something happens when you are in the hospital. People know you can't go anywhere so they don’t observe the same courtesies as if they were coming to your house. If you are going to visit, call, and try to pinpoint a time.
c) showing up between appts and telling said patient how "busy" you were today and said patient was squeezed in
Believe me, the patient knows you are busy. He or she was likely busy too before s/he were admitted. Chances are they s/he isn’t in the hospital for a lobotomy and s/he both gets the effort you made to come in and doesn’t need to be reminded of your supreme sacrifice.

TIP THREE - USING THE PHONE #2
Even if you DID pick a time, call from downstairs when you get there anyway. Your patient may be hooked up to something, in the bathroom, whatever and needs time to adjust. That tiny little tap on the door you make before you push the door open just doesn't cut it.


TIP FOUR - FINE DINING
Like most Americans, you probably can't go anywhere without food. Yes, it's been almost an hour since you have had access to food. God forbid one doesn't eat at every social gathering. Maybe you were rushing to get there and you were so "busy" you didn't eat? There is something positively Pavlovian about a hospital. "Oh a visit? We should eat."
DON'T.
Unless you called, see #'s 1 and 3 above, and the patient said "sure".
DON'T bring your dinner. DON'T walk in chirping “oh I haven’t eaten yet” and then proceed to unpack your paper take-out sack. DON'T place your food on the radiator, chair, tray table, foot of the bed, then proceed to feast like the last supper all the while talking. You do know that from the laying down position, most mouths are eye level? I assure you, the patient is not interested in seeing the food rolling in your mouth, or hearing you talk through it.

TIP FIVE - SANITATION ENGINEER
If you must eat or throw away the take-out that you ate BEFORE you came, your coffee cup, etc., DON'T throw your trash in the rooms trash. For most patients, trash is emptied once a day. In the morning. Whatever you throw away, the patient is going to smell for the next 12 hours.

TIP SIX - SANITATION EXPERT
There should be hand sanitizer near your patient's room door. Use it. There are germs are over you, your hands, your clothes, the elevator buttons you pushed to walk in the room, the handle on the door you opened to walk in. Likely that guy from Oprah could do the cotton swab test on you and you'd be rife with feces. You are one big nasty germ and the patient is the Iran Hostage to your Typhoid Mary.

TIP SEVEN - SHIRLEY TEMPLE AUDITIONS ARE NOT BEING HELD IN THE HALL
Keep your kids with you. The kitchen isn't a field trip, the halls aren't a track meet, and the cavernous hallways are not for your little darlings dulcet tones. No matter how cute your kid is, some other patient already hates him.

TIP EIGHT - GIFT BAGS ARE NOT GRAB BAGS subtitled HOSPITAL ROOMS ARENT RUMMAGE SALES
Try not to rifle through the patients things. Things in the patient’s room belong to them, and just because limited space necessitates that those items are on display, it doesn’t mean they are for your consumption or your perusal. Get well cards, gift bags, closets, bathrooms and bedside drawers are off limits. And lord knows, you're hungry right? Ask before you eat their snacks.

TIP NINE – THIS ISN’T A POPULARITY CONTEST
Does it really matter to you who else has come up to visit? Ask yourself why.

TIP TEN – ENQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW
If you normally demonstrate your care by expressing an interest through a series of questions, never is this a more inappropriate time. Questions such as “What did the Dr say” or “Do they (the ubiquitous “they”) know why this happened?” Inevitably, these questions lead to one of two scenarios:
1. the patient is forced to relive his or her appointments, medical history, prognosis and feelings about said prognosis to satisfy your curiosity (I’m fairly certain the patient already is aware of all this information so the sole purpose of repeating it is because you either nosy, or too lazy to look it up on the internet)
2. the patient is forced to listen to your subsequent platitudes as to “gods will”, “everything will work out” and “everything happens for a reason” or some derivative there of
And finally, the answer to “Do they know why this happened?”
Yes. They do. It’s because the patient is a bad person.

TIP ELEVEN – WWYD
The patient will not likely care What You Would Do. Try to avoid dispensing advice that begins with “If I were in your situation…”. While it’s highly unlikely that you are going to be in the same exact situation, it is fairly likely that your life experiences, personality, and general attitude are going to be dramatically different. The patient will not find your speculating interesting but will instead likely offer to trade spaces to give you the opportunity to display your poise and control over the situation.

And finally (and my personal favorite)

TIP TWELVE – BORED GAMES
The patient will be sorry to hear in any variation how bored you’d be if it were you. The patient wants to assume that you are bright. If you choose to profess the fact that you are neither self-aware enough nor self-entertaining enough to occupy your own mind, the patient is not likely to find you very interesting either. hances are, if the patient is in the hospital for any length of time, it’s fairly serious. And “being bored” is the furthest thing from their mind.