My experience with Hospital Food

I unexpectedly spent 5 horrific days in Royal Perth Hospital during the first week of January 2019.

It was due to a stomach ulcer which, fortunately was fixed up by the wonderful medical practitioners, but this meant having canulas for drips stuck into me.

To start with, there were 2, one in each arm — in the crook of the inside of the elbows, the one in the right arm was for heparin, a low-weight anti-coagulant (as a replacement for warfarin) and the one in the left arm was for a PPI, which I found meant a Proton Pump Inhibitor, a rather grand name for an antacid.

I was admitted on a Thursday afternoon, and after being fixed up, when told by some very nice doctors that I would have to stay in hospital for 3 evenings at least, I shouted “Why?” and one of them replied “Well you’ve had a serious event.”

You bet. I had a warning sign 2 days before the serious event, and on the day of it, I felt a bit off-color and faint. Later that day I fainted in the bathroom, and by a miracle of locations, I was rushed off in a taxi to the nearest hospital, which was only 5 minutes away.

My pulse and blood pressure was extremely low and a nurse shouted that my blood glucose was through the roof. The doctors did not mind this as more pressing things were at stake, and I knew the blood glucose was because of a huge delicious meringue pie that I had eaten the evening before.

I was sent to my ward in the early afternoon, and a nice caterer bustled up to me, and asked me what I would like for dinner that night.

Would I like chicken pie or beef casserole, she asked me.

I had noted that the other patients had charts above their beds, with “Clear Liquids Diet” and I wisely said that I wasn’t sure what I was allowed to eat, and this bewildered the caterer, who bustled off.

I would have loved to have chicken pie, and I wistfully thought about the delicious pork chops that I had eaten the evening before (followed by the meringue pie). But there was no chart at all, yet, above my bed.

Around 5 pm a caterer placed a tray of food on my table. The tray was festooned with pale packaged goodies — of an energy drink, orange juice, apple juice, and clear soup. I had the energy drink and the apple juice.

A sign went up above my bed, reading “Clear Liquids Diet.”

That evening I had a good sleep. That sleep was the only good sleep that I had during my 4 evenings at hospital.

The day after, I was given the same food for breakfast, lunch and dinner. To my surprise, coffee and tea were included in the “Clear Liquids Diet.”

The lady next to me in my ward had been there for 3 days already, and was really upset that she was still being given the same food on her 4th day — the same food as me.

She complained to a beautiful tall nurse, who looked like a model, that she couldn’t very well get better unless she ate real solid foods. The nurse agreed and advised her to speak to the Registrar on the weekend.

I felt very lack-luster and the fright of what had happened caught up with me. I hardly ate anything on Friday and Saturday. When I got home I found that I had lost 4 kg and that my weight had gone down from 44 kilograms to 40 kilograms.

On Saturday morning 2 days after I was admitted to hospital, I was talking to my partner on the phone and said “I never want to eat again” to which he replied “Don’t be silly, you have to eat or you’ll die.”

So I tried to have some clear soup and a little more to drink for lunch, though I shunned the jellies and gave them to a new patient who had arrived and whom loved jelly!

On Sunday 3 days after my admission, to our delight, the lady next to me and I were allowed to have a “Full Liquid Diet” and this meant that our food choices escalated to semolina for breakfast and thick soup for lunch and for dinner.

We happily told each other that the semolina (even though I thought it was porridge) was delicious, and we thoroughly enjoyed our soup.

I ate nearly all of my delicious pumpkin soup for lunch and the whole lot of my thick creamy chicken soup for dinner.

Sunday evening was supposed to be a happy peaceful event for me (as I expected to go home the next day and my tummy was a bit fuller) but alas, at 11 pm a nice night Doctor came to me and said he had to put a 3rd canula in.

After my protestations, my favorite nurse came and told me that I was low on potassium.

I asked if I could just take some tablets but she solemnly said No and that they would add in the mineral slowly, because of the pain. I couldn’t believe what I heard. Another nurse said that it would take 2 hours of 1 bag of 1 hour each, by drip.

Because of the viscosity of the potassium, it felt like my upper arm was being crushed, and my kind nurse laid an ice-bag on my arm, which didn’t really help but which squashed my arm even more.

I was glad when it was over and was cheered by another Nurse saying sorrowfully “3 drips is too much, poor soul.”

I agreed and when I got home on Monday evening, and went to bed, it took around 3 hours for the deafening noises of machines beeping (mine was forever beeping) and buzzers pressed, to dissipate!

On Monday morning, the day of my discharge, I was upgraded to a Soft Food Diet but my appetite was dulled because I was not happy, and I don’t like eating when I am depressed.

The lady who had been there for 3 days when I arrived, had gone home, and I had “ratted” on the 3rd lady in our ward, whom had wanted my jelly.

I saw her opening her drawer and taking out a wrapped sandwich and take a bite from it, so I told the next Nurse that I saw.

That patient could not speak a word of English and had “blown in” for a check-up for something or other.

Without her son there to translate, one Nurse, resorted cleverly I thought, to an online translator.

The Nurse whom I thought was a model, asked me if I could speak Chinese, but to her disappointment, I solemnly replied No. I was born of Chinese parents in Penang, Malaya, but brought to Perth, Western Australia as a baby and raised by an English Australian couple.

I managed to eat some beef casserole for lunch on Monday, and it was delicious, together with soft mashed carrot, soft zucchini, and mashed potato.

Then it was a waiting game — the hospital was organizing Silver Chain to visit me at home to measure my INR an anti-coagulant measure, in order to work out my warfarin doses.

The presiding Registrar for the week was going to write me a Medical Certificate for 2 weeks off work, and this took longer than I or the informing Nurse thought.

While waiting, a caterer asked if I was having dinner. I shook my head dolefully as going home was on my mind, not eating food.

But a Nurse who was present at that time in the ward may have noted how skinny I looked and said cheerily “You might as well.”

So I accepted a chicken casserole with soft carrot, zucchini and potato, and it was divinely delicious.

To my surprise, I gobbled it all up. Then I laid on my bed feeling rather like a Queen.

It was a lovely feeling being replete and feeling 100% better, without canulas stuck in me.

In hindsight having to push around the stand with the 2 drips attached to me, was a Life-saver. When it was removed, I felt very weak and had to wobble or tip-toe my way delicately to the bathroom, which luckily wasn’t far away.

It made me realise that I had been leaning on the stand with the drips to get to the bathroom. When I got back to bed I had to spend ages untangling the 2 tubes to the 2 drips, but it gave me something to do to while away the time.

Things weren’t over because I needed a Clexane shot and when a Nurse came I wailed that it hurt when it was given to me in my tummy, so she kindly put it into my leg which somehow didn’t hurt at all.

Phew, all in all, the food was delicious and the energy drinks and juices were specially for hospitals and must have given me good nutrients.

It took me a while at home, to get over the trauma and to re-adjust to my normal food, but I am glad that I made it through hospital.

I had spoilt the holiday of my sister and I as the day before I went to hospital, we had gone into town to spend a lovely 3 nights out at a hotel.

Of course my sister said that my getting help was more important than our planned holiday going askew, and bless her for getting the hotel staff whom put me in the taxi to the Hospital.

The happy memory that I have about my hospital stay is the food that I ate on my last 2 days.

I still remember the soup and the casseroles and soft vegetables, their colors and smells and taste; and how divine the normal diet of chicken pie and attendant delicious looking and yummy smelling roast vegetables looked!

I really could eat that “Soft Foods Diet” and the “Normal Diet Foods” everyday (but don’t want to be admitted again to a hospital to do this)!

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