Soup Bloat

I've recently heard of something new, people going to the hospital just for the food. That is, they have a cafeteria there and people go across town to eat there ... on purpose. Everything I've ever heard before of hospital food was how bad it was. But now, somehow, it became good.

When my dad was in the hospital we ate at the cafeteria a lot, in a different town, and the food there was tolerable. They had things that weren't bad. There was sandwiches if you wanted that. And chicken, etc. But I wouldn't drive across town and go there by choice.

Now, though, it's good, or at least that's what they say. So how would you get there faster? The hospital might advertise how food their food is, and say, "People are calling an ambulance just to get here quicker ... it's that good!" But an ambulance is an expensive thing, although it's definitely a sweet ride if you can lay down the whole way.

As for me, I had a big bowl of some kind of soup. Progresso, I would guess, which humongous noodles and big chunks of chicken. I had the Papa Bear bowl, so that was a lot of soup. I didn't think I'd be able to finish it, because I had more of a Baby Bear appetite. But I worked at it and kept working at it. Now I have soup bloat, being on top of the pot of coffee I drank in the last couple hours.

Not a good feeling. Maybe I should go to the hospital.

Intensive Care Toilets

There's all kinds of ways to start this. I'm tempted to use the tried and true, "Wouldn't you think?" approach, as in "Wouldn't you think that modern technology and medical practice would have come to some obvious intersection where it would be not only feasible but demanded that the intensive care unit of your local hospital would have actual toilets by now?"

I was at the intensive care unit and it's like an outhouse there without the house! It's insane. They have one of those loan closet manual jobbies in the room, basically a bucket with a lid. There's no lining that goes in before you go. No water to soften the blow. Just a plastic bucket. Then what? Someone has to scrape it out and sanitize it? Give me a break.

I asked the nurse if that was common, why they didn't have toilets. She gave me a story about another place she worked where they also didn't have them. She seemed on the verge of making me think that was common practice, till I said I needed to go home and study that on the internet and see if it could be. At that point she backed up a little and made it clearer that it was a space issue, that they would have to have less rooms if they had actual toilets.

The whole subject nauseated me, and I was already nauseated for other reasons. I grew up going out to an outhouse and those were better than this, where they charge you thousands of dollars a day to stay.

And you can't tell me they're able to sanitize it so well that no residue and smell remains. Here's why there's so much staph infection in hospitals. They haven't yet discovered the modern toilet.