Hospitals: they take your pride away!

Been to a hospital lately? For your pride and ego, I hope not. I had heard some stories, some that even made me laugh, but I guess until you experience it yourself, you don’t really know just how humiliating it can be.

One of my friends had told me about this wheelchair with a hole in the seat. The concept of that Oh-so-special-chair is that the nurse sits you butt-naked on it and wheels you over the toilet to do your business. That’s where the hole comes handy! Anyway, the image made me laugh. I wasn’t laughing so much though when I had to be accompanied to the bathroom last July and that I had to have the nurse help me wipe my ass.

It’s always funnier when it happens to others. My husband is having a blast every time he recalled my stay at the hospital. Most of my friends think my story is hilarious. So here it is. If it can make people smile, I guess it’s worth the little embarrassment.

It was the day my son was born. He was a C-Section so it was scheduled and we had to stay at the hospital four days. We got to the hospital at 8am, although we were just schedule for 1pm. I had to be “prep” was what they said. Oh and did they prep me!

First, they made me put on that awful blue gown and walk around butt naked to my room. Well it wasn’t even my room; it was my waiting room! Here we were, my husband and I, thinking that we would slowly get settle in our room, watch TV or read a book until 1pm. How innocent were we!!!

So in that waiting room I was seen by a succession of nurses, doctors and interns, all less shy than one another. Okay, I know it’s their jobs and that they see naked people every day, all day long, but hey, I don’t get naked in front of strangers everyday and that should be taken into consideration. I believe they think that giving their names and status make it okay because they all start the same way: “ Hi my name is Blah Blah Blah and I am your nurse/doctor/ interns for the day.” After that up to your neck goes the blue gown and your butt is exposed to the world. So I was there, naked and petrified that five people saw me naked in the last hour, but they casually asked me all those health’s questions and it would have never occurred to them to lower back my gown once they were done.

They all left and I finally thought I was having a break until the procedure when this nurse came in. The blue gown was up again after she stated her name. “ Oh dear, we have to shave you,” she said. My face must have worth a million bucks because my husband burst into laughter.

I have no intention to be graphic but here’s the thing; when you are nine months pregnant, shaving can be a challenge because, well lets face it, you don’t see yourself there! Still, I have some pride and there was no way I was to go to the hospital unshaven. So the day before I put on a lot work and effort into the attempt of shaving and I really thought I did a good job. I got up on a small stool, surrounded myself by mirror and got to work but apparently all my work and effort were vain because it wasn’t to the nurse standard.

It might seem really silly, but to have someone shave you down there is quite humiliating, especially if you have your husband next to you dying of laughter, “ Oh my God, she is giving you a coupe longueuil!” For those of you who are not from Quebec and have no clue what a coupe longueuil is, well it’s pretty much the equivalent of a mullet. I wanted to strangle him. He even joked and asked the nurse if she could do him next. She giggled. At least they were having fun!

I’ll spare you the details of the actual procedure. So that bring us to about 2 pm. My son is born and healthy and I am in my real room. I am under morphine and can’t feel anything from the waist down. Two nurses come along. “ We are going to wash you.” Oh dear lord, please help me! They lifted me and swung me from side to side, and all the while I couldn’t feel a thing, I sure felt helpless and embarrassed. So I am praying for this to end as quickly as possible and just when I thought that it was over, one of them said, “ If you feel a little discomfort, it’s the suppository.” Here goes my husband laughing again. Oh, he did try to hold his laughter to be supportive but it didn’t quite work. Hearing someone holding back their laughter is probably worst than hearing them laugh out loud.

At that point, we are up to about fifteen persons who saw me naked which might be more than in my entire adult life. I am about to die of shyness and I got my pride stuck mid-throat. But my journey wasn’t over yet.

I had no intention to breastfeed but I let myself been convinced that I should at least give my son the colostrum (some kind of milk that come out right after birth and help protecting your baby from infection.) The thing is, my son wouldn’t feed from my breast. “ It’s not a problem,” the oldest nurse said, “ we can extract it.” And before I knew it I had two pairs of hands on my breast trying to extract milk in a little cup. I was so shocked that I just froze and let them do their business. More people had saw me naked and hold my breast in one day than in my whole life. That can be normal, yet I couldn’t do anything about it.

The next day I woke up, all happy because I assumed I would finally be functional and that I would be able to attend my own business without the help of anyone but my husband. Well let me tell you that I was wrong again. I was set for a few more little discomfort because apparently medication works its way better by suppositories and I was also instructed to call a nurse if I needed to go to the bathroom.

Thank God, they didn’t have the Oh-so-special-wheelchair mentioned by my friend but still I had to be accompanied to the bathroom, trailing my IV behind me. I was just lucky I got a private room with a bathroom.

So I get to the bathroom. I can’t even pull down my underwear (yeah I finally had the right to put them back on). So humiliating. “I’ll be right outside the door,” the nurse said. Well that was it; knowing she was there, I just couldn’t pee. I felt so silly when I had to called her back and tell her it didn’t work. “I thought you had to go.” “Yeah so did I!” She pulled back up my underwear and helped me wobble back to my bed. Thirty minutes later, when there was no way I could hold it in any longer, I called her again.

All smile, she brought me back to the bathroom, pulled down my underwear and secured me on the bowl. They might not have had the special wheelchair but they had the pee-sample-retrieval-bucket, which consists into a little plastic bucket attach to the inside of the toilet for you to pee in. The bucket is small and I hadn’t peed in 24 hours. (I had a catheter.) Not a good combination. The nurse is yet again outside the door, this time cheering me. Yeah for real, she literally cheered me. It didn’t matter how shy I was, that time I couldn’t hold it in. But not only couldn’t I hold it in, I couldn’t stop it either. I felt like I peed forever and all I could think of was: “Please don’t overflow the stupid bucket. Please don’t overflow the bucket!” The last thing I needed was to cover myself with pee and needed to be wash again. I thankfully stopped one millimeter short and prevent the overflow.

Those are only the first 24 hours of my stay and I spared you some details. Let me tell you that when I walked out of the hospital four days later, there was no pride left in me. So my advice for you: if you have to go to the hospital, be prepared. You can afford to be proud or prude!

Difference in Perception

A while back, I went to see a show. One sentence caught my attention and since then I can't stop thinking about it. This guy said, "When you interact with someone, there is three things to take into consideration: what you want to say or do, what you actually say or do and what the other person really understand."

It's stuck into my mind because it's so true. Everyone has a different perception of things. We all feel things differently. Sometime we don't express ourselves the way we would want to and our sayings or actions are taken the wrong way. Sometime we do it to be polite, sometime because we don't want to hurt our friends or because it's the right thing to say at that moment.

This guy gave a funny example but I could relate to it so much that it made me laugh. He said, "It’s like when someone come with a new look, a haircut or new clothes, and asks you how you like it and you answer: ‘It's a style’.  In your head you might think that it’s ugly like hell but the other person understand that she has style and it’s all good. You might think that it's actually really nice but the other person thinks that you are sarcastic. Or maybe you think that it’s ugly and the person understand that you don't like it or vice versa if you think it nice. The problem is that you never really know."

My friends with me at the show laughed so much because they all recognized me. All my friends know now that if I tell you, "Well it's a style " It really mean that I think it’s ugly.

But anyway that's just one funny example but it can apply to everything in your life because we all see thing differently and because things have a different meaning to each of us.

Once I had an interview for a job and at the end of the interview the woman told me, "Thanks for coming it was nice meeting you. The only problem is that this time I only have good candidates who applied. It will be hard." I took it the wrong way. I understood that I was Nice but that all the other candidates were Good. So for me, it really meant: “Read between the line. You wont get it " Especially, that I was the first person they passed in interview. I thought to myself: "She haven't meet them yet and she already thinks they are good!!" I got out of this interview so depressed. But hey surprise, surprise! Four days later she came to me to offer me the job and told me: "We were so impressed by you after you left the interview that we kept comparing every other candidates to you and in the end no one could made us change our mind. You are our first choice no doubt. Welcome to the team!!" I was on shock. I really didn't expect that. When I started my new job, I told her how I felt about what she said and she was on shock too. She said that she never meant it the way I understood it. By her saying all the candidates were good, she assumed that I would understand that I was good too. So I stressed and depressed for absolutely nothing. Contrary of what I thought, I had made an amazing impression on her. She meant to make me a compliment and I took it as a fault. Funny how we can perceive things!

It’s like in relationships. You can lead people to believe things without you knowing or wanting it because you analyze things with our own vision and don’t realize others might have a different vision.

About 5-6 years ago, I got this guy who tried to make a move on me. When I told him I was not into him that way, he told me I was just a tease and that I did everything to lead him on. I was confused and asked him what on earth I had done because I honestly didn’t know. It was a guy from work and we used to do the same shift. We also lived really close to each other, so he offered me to pick me up in the morning and drop me at night. For me, it was so innocent and also just really logic. We did the same ride everyday, why not do it together? We split our expenses in two, we had company; that made so much sense to me. For me, it was all friendly and didn't mean anything more. But for him, offering me that was a way to get closer to me. Therefore, he thought that by me accepting his offer it meant that I wanted to get closer too. We also had our lunch together. So once again, for me, it was just logic. Why would I go sit at the opposite side of the cafeteria when we can sit together and chat? “That's what friends do,” I thought. In his head, he was thinking that he would never spent so much time with someone unless he is interested, so he assumed that I was. I ended up looking like a bitch that played him all along but I never meant that. He saw in my actions a potentially future girlfriend and I saw in him a really good friend.

I am the kind of person who worries way too much about things. Sometime, I will do something and feel really stupid about it. I will think about it for days, replay it in my head over and over again and feel like crap. So I will hide from whoever witnessed my “Stupidity”. But the truth is that 95% of the time that person did not even notice what I did, didn't think much about it or simply forgot about it 5 minutes later.

I've been told that I'm intimidating and even sometime that I look arrogant, which is so far from what I am. I am insecure in so many ways. I act the way I do to protect myself most of the time. I am scared to get hurt, so I built that shell. Now I realized by listening to people around me, that it makes me look cold. One of my friend told me that when he first met me he would have never dare do the first step because he thought I would have turn him down big time. Meanwhile, I had the same feeling about him; I didn't think I was cool enough to talk to him. So here again it's the same story. Sometime what you think and the way you express it are two different things and it can alter what other people might think of you.

The problem is that something so obvious for you can go totally unnoticed to someone else, important things for you can be meaningless for others and vice versa.

There is so many meaning to every little thing life that sometime it gets hard to find people who think like you. Much more that you can never know in advance. You might think you are on the same mind track but until you really get to know someone you’ll never really know. You can frequent someone for months and even years, like at work, and you will never really know what he or she thinks.

But I guess that's what makes friendship or love so special. When you get to the point that you understand the other person the right way without a doubt in your mind, it means that your relationship is true.

Existential questions

Ever watched a movie that left you totally in awe but yet, also totally confused about yourself because it brought existential questions that you couldn’t quite face or answer? I did and even today, I am still not sure I can answer those questions. I keep having a fight between my conscience and instinct. Picture me as one of those cartoon’s characters with a little angel on one shoulder and a little evil on the other, each trying to win me over to their side, and you will have a pretty good idea of how I feel.

I don't know if you guys know the movie “ Return to Paradise ” but if you don't it's a must. It’s really deep and emotional. It might leave you feeling helpless, but it’s so good in a twisted way. In short, it’s the story of three guys traveling to Malaysia. They buy some weed and then at the end of the trip one of them decides to stay a bit longer while the two other ones return to NYC. The one staying keeps the weed with him. A week later he gets caught with it. As per Malaysian laws, due to the amount of weed in his possession, he is considered a drug dealer and will face the death row. Though, if his two friends come back and share the blame, they would each serve five years or if only one of the two comes back they will each serve ten years.

After you see that movie you can help but ask yourself: “Would I go back?" , " Am I willing to give up five or ten years of my life and leave my love ones behind me to go in a Malaysian’s prison? " I couldn’t answer the first time around and as we speak now, I still don’t have an answer. If it was in Canada, I like to believe that I would go back. You can never say for sure unless you are face with the decision but I can say in all honesty that I would truly consider it to save my friend. But a Malaysian’s prison, it's a whole different story. My first instinct scream, “NO WAY!” But then comes the other question: " Would I be able to live with myself knowing that my friend die because of me? "  I don't know what would be worst: the after-effects a stay in a Malaysian’s prison could leave me with or living with the death of a friend on my conscience for the rest of your life. I am still unable to take position so I made a deal with my friends; if we ever travel together; no one is to do anything illegal! That way I’ll never have to take that decision.

Next, " Life of David Gale " which I guess all of you knows. The question being: " Would I die for my beliefs? ". For me, it's a bit extremist, but at the same time, a little voice saying, “If no one acts, things will never change or evolve." keeps nagging me. After all, most of humanity’s biggest achievements were obtained because someone stood up and put his/her life on the line. Again, the little angel and evil are fighting over my shoulders. Why me? Why should I be the one? But then I'm thinking am I selfish? Looking at every angle I have to admit that I am not willing to die for my beliefs. My own survival’s instincts prevail on my instinct to protect human race. Sad? Weak? Coward? Maybe, I am still not sure. When I look at myself in a mirror, I tell myself that not everybody can be a hero. So far it worked to keep me in peace with myself.

Next controversial movie on my list: “ A Time to Kill ”. We all asked ourselves at some point of time if it’s right to seek our own justice. I used to say that if you kill a killer you become one yourself since you are doing exactly the same thing you want to condemn him for. Now that I am a mother, I can’t defend that argument as strongly as before because when I look at my little man and imagine anyone hurting him, I know deep inside that there is nothing in this world that could stop me to hunt down and torture the sick bastard who would have dare to touch one hair of my son. Would it be right? Absolutely not but it would be forgivable. Sure the world would be a heck of a mess if everyone was to go ahead avenge him or herself, but no matter how much I try, I can’t condemn them as easy as before. Things are not so black and white anymore. Having a child brought a whole new grey zone in my life and my vision of it.

Those are only three examples of movies that left me very pensive and perplexed about myself but I think I stirred enough questions for one day. I’ll give my mind a little break, but I’d love to have your opinions and I’d love to know what movies made you pensive?