I Will Survive

the breakfast you get in a hospital when you know the right people

Yesterday morning my Uncle Michael told the director of nursing at the hospital of my plight with the food. She took one bite of my eggs, then, without even tasting anything else, dumped the entire contents of the tray into the trash and stormed out of the room.  My Uncle Michael followed her out.

He came back about ten minutes later and said my breakfast would be ready shortly. The nurse went into the kitchen and threw something of a hissy fit. She then proceeded to help herself to ingredients and cooked my breakfast herself, narrating the process for proper cooking technique as she did so. She picked up a container of salt after she had cracked two eggs onto the grill. "This is known as salt," she explained as she sprinkled some on my eggs as she scrambled them. "If it is not noted on a patient's dietary restrictions that he or she has blood pressure or kidney issues and should not have salt, it is customary to use it when cooking eggs in any form."  The asked for the pancake batter and poured two pancakes onto the grill. After waiting about ten seconds, she scooped them off the grill and into the trash. "Who made this crap, and what the hell did you put  in it?" she muttered.  She asked for the flour, salt, baking powder, another egg, and whatever else goes into pancakes, and mixed batter from scratch without even measuring anything, My Uncle Michael said.  She asked for oranges and the juicer, and squeezed fresh orange juice for me. He said it was like watching a Saturday Night Live  parody of a Food Network program.

The end result was that about twenty-five minutes after she first tasted and tossed  my original breakfast, I had  new breakfast in front of me that was at least as good as it would have been had it been prepared by a local restaurant. I ate it all.  The director of nursing said that she would either prepare my meals herself from that point on or would assign the task to a nurse that she knew for a fact had the cooking skills to prepare an edible meal.  I can live with that.

It's a bit of a touchy issue, as the director of nursing technically does not oversee kitchen operations, but in the grand hierarchy of hospital status, the director of nursing does outrank the director of food services.  Regardless, this lady is the sort that no one, including most doctors, will take on, so I'll eat well for the rest of my stay here.

Dr. Kent, my surgeon, came by very early this morning.  he said that if I could manage to eat enough to sustain a gerbil,  there's a good chance I'll be released tomorrow instead of Wednesday.  Since my food situation has been resolved, I can probably eat enough to sustain four or five gerbils, so things are looking good for a release tomorrow. 

We've apparently had a bit of heat wave, but hospital temperatures are whatever you want them to be, so I've been unaffected. 

Have a happy week!