LIFE IS ALL A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE
My husband had a lumbar laminectomy to ease a herniated disc and alleviate the terrible pain caused by that, coupled with severe spinal stenosis. We’ve been married for 50 years, and I hoped and prayed that the hospital where he had the surgery, Morristown Medical Center, a half an hour drive from our New Jersey home, would allow me to stay in his room while he began his recuperation.
I could not have been happier to find that his hospital room had a couch that opened into a bed, and the staff offered me access to the linen closet for sheets, a pillow, a pillowcase, and a blanket. Post my husband’s 3½-hour surgery, that room was our “home away from home” for three days and nights. What a relief to be close at hand to ensure all his post-operative needs were met in a timely fashion.
On the final morning of our stay, another patient was doing his post-surgical walk down the hospital corridor, with his wife trailing. She stopped to peek into our room, finding me resting visibly on the pull-out sofa bed. I heard her say, “Oh, so that’s how those beds open up. I could have slept here with him.“ It was the following comment she made that stunned me. She added, “Thank G-d I didn’t.” My thought was the exact opposite.
While everyone knows that a hospital is not a place for rest, as little sleep as my husband and I got in the hospital those three nights, it was reassuring to both of us that he was properly cared for. Furthermore, he didn’t have to be concerned about me being home alone and not knowing how he was feeling. Yes, indeed, life is all a matter of perspective.
P.S. I was right back on that bed for four more nights when my husband had complications from the surgery, and I spent one more night on a recliner in another nearby hospital after he wound up with additional complications after we caught COVID (even though we had our boosters) at one of the other hospital stays.
Sleepless nights, yes, comforting to be together…you bet. I’ll say it again, life is all a matter of perspective.