(photograph © Kiwidutch)
Technology has come a long way in recent years and within the medical profession and during my recent hospital stay I used many “old” things that have been updated to fit into the modern age.
I’ve had surgery as a kid, teenager, young adult and several times as an adult and each time I’ve been impressed by the updates in technology that allow the patients to have a less stressful stay.
As a kid I had to stay in hospital for long enough that I had school lessons there. It was in the old children’s ward in Christchurch Hospital in the South Island of New Zealand and the massive brick, long, high ceiling rooms had a long row of beds along the wall and swing doors at either end.
The bigger kids were in the long row of beds in one of the long rooms and in the long adjoining room on the other side of the wall, were the toddlers and babies in their bassinets and cots.
I clearly remember getting into trouble for having wheelchair races with a fellow patient: a boy called Johnny, and making so much noise in the next room that we woke up a baby, who’s cries set off the next one, and then the next, until the entire row bassinets and cots contained a near full compliment of bawling infants for the staff to pacify.
I’m not certain if it was before or after that, that a teacher arrived at my bedside along with the dreaded school workbooks that I thought I’d been lucky enough to have given the slip. I remember that I also got homework to do which I though most unfair if a kid were in hospital.
I’d had operations on both feet to straighten severely bent toes (yes, there is something going on with me and feet) and I remember my parents standing by my bedside with a lady who informed me that she was going to teach me to walk again.
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
I remember laughing out loud and telling her indignantly that that was silly because “of course I knew how to walk“, and before they could stop me, sprang out of bed to prove it and landed in an startled heap on the floor.
It became a family story at my expense for years afterwards of course, and took a long time to live down.
During my stay in hospital I also remember my parents visiting and having the bright idea of feeding the ducks. The Avon river ran though the grounds and the weather was lovely so it seemed to be a good idea.
The first shock was that we got there via a series of long outside metal ramps which were like long snaking fire escapes (which indeed they were), since we were several stories up these open metal ramps with views through the gaps to the ground far below, terrified me both on the downwards journey and the return.
Installed on a blanket on the banks of the river, we fed an ever increasing number of ducks as word got out that a free lunch was on offer. At some crucial moment a duck squabble broke out over the last remaining pieces of bread and the ducks started taking bites at my toes, which had been painted in a bright yellow antiseptic something in the operating theatre, and which the ducks obviously thought was bread.
I started screaming and seconds later there was a frantic evacuation from both ducks and parents with kid … another family story that my parents remembered as being far funnier than I did.
Because I wasn’t allowed to put weight on my newly straightened toes, I had to learn to “walk” indoors barefoot on my heels only, but needed a wheelchair for outside and longer distances.
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
Once back at school my twin sister took great pleasure in dumping me out of my chair and onto one of the wooden benches near the playing field, talking the chair for a spin with her friends.
On several occasions I had to be rescued from my lonely spot after the bell rang by a teacher who’d noticed me missing from class and the wheelchair abandoned somewhere around the school grounds.
Back in the hospital as a kid, I remember being impressed by the fact that there was a small communal room near the end of the ward that contained a television.
How things change: during my recent stay I had a television all to myself and not just that, but it was a touch screen system with a handset on the side that allows patients to select radio, television, internet, electronic games and music options or to make phone calls inside the Netherlands.
There were about twenty radio station choices, about forty television station ones and five electronic games. All accessed by the touch screen and a set of headphones per patient completed the private entertainment system.
I must say that in the wee hours of the night when I was struggling with pain, having some older blockbuster Hollywood movies and various documentary channels were certainly appreciated, even though I learned more about wilderness survival techniques and the drama of living / working in remote places than I ever needed or particularly wanted to know.
Ice fishing, mountaineering, bear evading, logging trucks and survival skills aside, it was nice to be able to put the headphones on and try and focus on something other than the fact that I still had an hour and a half to wait until I could have my next morphine top up.
During the day Himself could telephone me directly, something I especially appreciated on days when he couldn’t visit and I even got a phone call from my father in New Zealand. The “old days” of the hospital I knew as a kid, are light-years away from the technology of today… and who knows what the modern hospital of the future will look like one day?
I can just see my (then grown up) kids pointing to this touch screen TV and saying ” Hey! get a look at this, it’s soooooo old fashioned!”
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
Dutch, Vlaams (Belgium), French. German, UK, television channels…
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
To dial and make a telephone call…
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
