Don't bump your head south of I-80 and 9 other things I learned from my mom's stay in the hospital

My mom was in the hospital for the first 17 days of July. She went in with what was diagnosed as a subdural hematoma, a bled clot on the outside of the brain. They thought they would have to operate to relieve the pressure on her skull by drilling a small hole in her head, much like you take a pin to your big toenail if you bruise it, I guess. Sometimes I think my head already is filled with holes, so perhaps I won’t be suffering a similar fate when I am in my 70s.

Anyway, they didn’t have to do that. Turns out she has a big brain, which apparently helped the situation. Who knew? All those word search puzzles she does must have paid off.

The hematoma may have been brought on by one of the tradeoffs of modern medicine. The replacement valve in her heart requires she takes blood thinners which makes her susceptible to troubles from cuts, bumps and bruises, much like a hemophiliac would be.

Hence, a bump on the noggin can lead to something like what happened.

Fortunately, unlike the Middle East or the Chicago Cubs, things had a way of working themselves out, and she appears to be doing well.

And from such incidents you can learn life lessons, just like that Mitch Albom did with his buddy Maury - but without a book deal, TV movie or play in the back of my mind, but a looming big ass hospital bill. Hey, the least they could do is dedicate Room 1206 to her.

Anyway, here are 10 things I discovered from my mom’s ordeal. Hey, when you are sitting in a hospital room for six hours a day and driving back and forth on the Dan Ryan Oppressed Way, you have plenty of time to ponder.

Here goes.

1. Don’t hurt you head in Illinois south of Interstate 80.

With malpractice insurance for neurosurgeons approaching $300,000 a year, it seems fewer doctors are willing to specialize in such. For a town such as Joliet, which has well over 100,000 residents and where my mom first went to a hospital, this apparently means there is one guy for the whole area.

Thus they were going to send my mom all the way down to Peoria just in case she needed surgery. Luckily they were able to get her into Northwestern Memorial in downtown Chicago.

On July 3, the night of the big fireworks show. I was sent to meet her there at 6 p.m. She got there at 11:30 p.m.


2. Hospital rooms should come with computers and Internet access.

At the prices they charge, unless in interferes with the equipment rooms should have such. It beats TV, and could allow patients who are well enough to have virtual visits with friends and family who live far away or who can’t stop in.

3. I pretty much think I could be screwed when I get old if I get put in a hospital.

How is anyone in their 40s or younger going to be able to afford getting old, yet alone old and sick?
Plus, the way families move about and friendships come and go with the tides, who is going to be there to hold your hand. Even if you have kids they could be scattered across the world - and maybe that’s why people get married and have kids, to have someone for them at the end.

Fun being single, ain’t it?

4. Someone needs to start a Web site of contact bases for when people go into the hospital.

To help avoid the scenario in Number 3, such a Web site would be where you put e-mail addresses, phone numbers and other contact info for the friends and family you’d want to know if you are sick.

Maybe there could be some sort of bracelet that paramedics or a hospital would take off you to put in a code to activate the site to put out a mass e-mail that you are in the hospital.

People on your list have to promise to try and visit or at least maybe call or send flowers.

5. Which is which, bored or lonely?

After being through the last two weeks, I can’t imagine how people with loved ones with really bad, prolonged diseases cope.

Hospitals can be boring, lonely places. With what they charge, can’t they work on this?

6. How do you keep family ties that bind from cutting off your air supply?
I love my family, and though we aren’t the stuff of Eugene O’Neil drama, we ain’t exactly the Brady Bunch either. Crises, if not externally, can get you thinking about the fun and the dysfunction.

And you tend to fall into old patterns, which is to say I found myself reverting to how I behaved as a teen-ager for a few instances, which is to say as an asshole.

7. What planet do you land on when you get older?

As I said at the end of Number 7....

But man, but even when you are in your 40s it can seem like your parents are in a different galaxy. And I am sure they think the same of me.

8. The Barbarian Invasions.

Rent it. It’s a Canadian movie about a professor who figures out how to die with some dignity, which is to say with friends and family and laughs with the sorrow. Of course, it helps that he has a rich son who can pull some strings to arrange all of the above.

9. In order to check out of the hospital you must be able to master the art of the cart.

That little table on wheels they give you to have in bed or your chair can seem like Rubick’s Cub with it’s hidden compartments. If you can effectively use the vanity and tray releases you are well on your way to recovery.

10. No matter how bad you think you have it, there very well might be someone worse off than you are.

There was a family in the 12th floor lobby for a few days all there to support a loved one in the hospital, a guy who out of the blue was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

Empathy is in short supply on this planet. If you can't learn in in a hospital, you are part of the real axis of evil.