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Ian: November 4th, 2022 Why do hospitals give me so much FOOD???? [1]
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Date: 2022-11-03
Lyta playing with Bit on the recliner. They definitely have the Russian Blue green eyes, both of them.
Morning! Happy Friday!! Bit is off Thursday, so we’re going for groceries then. So I’ll be on to comment/moderate once the kittens are played out (maybe a little before depending on time).
As most of you know, I had emergency surgery last Saturday. I’m recovering well, pain levels are going down a little each day. I go see the surgeon on the 16th for a follow up, and I’ll see my PCP next week. I don’t know what day yet, I’m going to try and time it for when Bit is off work.
Why do they give you so MUCH food in the hospital though? They give me at least twice as much as what I normally eat in a day, insist you eat a large part of it, or they won’t send you home, and then, if you happen to not be within their optimal weight, lecture you on eating less! LOL.
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I had one day when I was on clear liquids. Which was fine, I wasn’t that hungry. But they kept sending me jello.. with sugar in it, and regular sugar packets for the drinks. Dietary never got the info that I’m diabetic, even though it’s all over my chart (I’ve looked up my chart online to make sure.)
That was problem one. They also kept sending me coffee, even though I requested hot tea. And the dietary staff was rude, when I asked for tea instead, they told me just to ‘not bother drinking the coffee’. Thankful for great nurses who actually brought me tea.
Once they changed me to a ‘soft’ diet, this is what they gave me:
For breakfast:
eggs
French toast (with butter and regular syrup)
Grits (eww.. and with 2 sugar packets)
and fruit in heavy syrup.
Milk
So I ate the eggs, and the French toast sans syrup. I didn’t drink the milk because I was congested from lack of asthma meds (doctor never bothered to order them) and I didn’t want to risk making it worse.
What I normally eat at home:
A Jimmy Dean microwaved ham egg and cheese muffin, or a bowl of oatmeal, or a bowl of cheerios with Splenda.
A can of Sparkling Ice plus Caffeine.
A bottle of water or two in between meals
Lunch:
Chicken rice soup
five HUGE chunks of beef (I had to quarter them to eat them) in gravy
Rice (didn’t eat, too much carb)
Mixed veg
Dinner roll with butter
mixed fruit in heavy syrup (didn’t eat)
unsweet iced tea with sugar packets (drank it without sweetener)
tiny little bottle of water.
What I normally eat at home:
A sandwich (on whole wheat or low carb bread, sometimes a wrap in a low carb tortilla), or a salad, or leftovers. Sometimes a can of soup.
Plus a can of Sparkling Ice plus caffeine or unsweet tea with Splenda
A bottle of water or bottle of sparkling ice water in between meals
Dinner:
A chicken breast with gravy
Rice
Peas
Dinner roll
Sweet potato pie (didn’t eat)
Grape juice
Tiny little bottle of water
What I normally eat at home
Some form of protein (chicken, pork, sometimes beef)
Mashed potatoes or rice.. sometimes baked ‘fries’.
A veg.
A bottle of water or a bottle of sparkling ice water.
Before bed snack:
Whole wheat english muffin with sugar free peanut butter or maybe a sugar free chocolate
I’ve worked in medical, I know what happens when you don’t eat enough of your tray consistently, it can slow your release home. So I eat most of it. But that is like 2-3 times the amount of food I usually eat in a day. And then the dietitian wants to come have a chat because I’m overweight and diabetic, and talk to me about changing my diet at home so I’m not eating as much LOL. I really don’t eat much. I never have. Those diets based on 1200 calories a day to make you lose weight are usually about the amount I usually eat or sometimes more than what I usually eat.
I’ve got my blood sugar down where it’s almost always below 120, never above 180 unless there are special circumstances (like a lot of pain spikes my sugar, doesn’t matter if I don’t eat at all). In the hospital I was running around 150 before lunch and dinner (still around 85 before breakfast though).
I find it really annoying when the people lecturing me on what I eat have no freaking clue what I really eat. Especially when they aren’t following my dietary restrictions in what they are giving me. I do tend to eat more carbs with dinner/for a before bed snack, because otherwise my sugar is in the 60’s when I get up (and I can’t eat right away because of my thyroid med). But during the day, I don’t eat a whole lot and I’m very careful what I eat.
Ivanova in the hallway. They are getting so BIG!
The nurses did make sure I had water and juice in between meals (I don’t usually drink juice, but I figured, I was recovering from surgery and my normal diet was blown anyway LOL). I still felt dehydrated most of the time, because I wasn’t drinking as much as I usually do. I know I wasn’t, because they were also pumping fluids IV, but I felt like it.
The doctors and nursing staff were great. No medical gas lighting, and they took what I said seriously. I didn’t hear anything about FND being ‘all in my head’ or any of that BS. The ER doctor actually told me that he knew this WASN’T my FND and he would figure out what it was, probably gall bladder (which it was) or an embolism (which it thankfully wasn’t). But he said don’t worry about just being discharged and having something bad happen, because that wasn’t happening that day. I’m grateful for that, it made me feel a lot more confident about being there alone, and about this hospital in general (it’s not my ‘normal’ once I used since we moved here, that one shut down in August of 2020).
The surgeon said I scared him because my gall bladder was in a LOT worse shape than what I presented as (chronic pain sufferer, I don’t register pain like a ‘normal’ person. If it’s bad enough I’m going to the hospital, assume it is BAD). I read the surgeon’s report in my file, it was *really* close to rupture, and I’m lucky they removed it without it causing more problems than it did. This is why I spent an extra day in the hospital on IV antibiotics.
The only real problem I had was with Dietary. I don’t know if they were never told I was diabetic, or if they just never added it on. And I could do without the lecture. Yes, I’m overweight. I’m also disabled, have COPD and have a *really* hard time doing exercise, especially as it makes several of my chronic conditions *worse*. Plus I’m on at least one med that tends to add weight. My diabetes is under control… with diet, without meds or insulin. And I’ve lost 15 lbs in the last 6 months. So I think, overall, I’m not doing too badly. So I’m trying to just let that lecture roll off my back. But it’s hard. It would have been more helpful if she had actually had a conversation about what I normally eat, along with the limitations on what I can do, and then helped me come up with a better plan. But no one in the medical field seems interested in that. They would rather just hand me “diet sheets” and ‘food plans’, that include many things I can’t have, many more things I just can’t make (because of physical limitations), and many many things I can’t afford.
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