Kudos to the Nurses at Community Medical Center

Let’s start with the obvious and that is nobody likes going to the hospital unless they are there for the birth of a baby.

Okay there might be a few minor exceptions but for the most part you enter a hospital in a bad mood because it’s really the last place you want to be.  Hospitals are where sick people go to hopefully get better and often the only time a patient smiles is when they are leaving.

I say this having witnessed the smile on my mother’s face after leaving Community Medical Center Thursday following a very lengthy stay, the better part of 32 days with a short stint in rehab in between before being readmitted.

My mother is 93 years old and saying she has been blessed with good health would be an understatement.  I can only remember one other time in which she was admitted to the hospital and that might have been about 10 years earlier.  My brother, sister and I used to joke that when she dies we should have her body donated to medical science.

The woman never even took an aspirin for the first 80 years of her life and wasn’t on any medications at all until having a minor heart issue which did send her to the hospital on that one other occasion.  Oh and she’s been a smoker for most of her life only stopping just before this recent incident which was something new.

So back to my original point and that is the hospital is not a happy place to be and that is never been truer than right now because visitors are not allowed due to the spike in COVID-19 cases.  So imagine what it was like for a 93-year old to spend Christmas and another four weeks in the hospital alone. Pretty depressing.

With that said what I also came away with was this.  Nurses are AMAZING and even more so during this pandemic.  Not only did they give my mother exceptional care they did their very best to communicate with us which was vital since I can’t quite say the same for all the doctors.

Especially in these challenging times nurses are the lifeline between patients and family and I came away with a new found respect for what they do.  The same can be said for case managers and social workers who are tasked with a greater responsibility than ever.

Hospitals are not five-star hotels but my take is that just about everyone who works in one does so with the intention of helping and healing.