With a little luck, I’ll be discharged and head home today.
Here are a whole slew of experiences and observations1 from my last few days in the hospital.
When hospitalized, food and eating have always been problem spots for me.2 During past hospitalizations, I was forced to deal with the arbitrary meal times at which the kitchen sent every patient his or her meal. Breakfast had to be at 7:30 am, lunch at 12:00 noon and dinner at 5:30 pm. Like most people with Crohn’s, however, I eat whenever I can (and whenever my gut says it’s okay). Outside the hospital that usually transslates to 4–5 small meals each day, usually starting with breakfast at 5:00 am and ending with a final small meal at 7:00 pm. So inevitably when I would be hospitalized, my meal schedule got entirely messed up, with the biggest problem being that I would go long stretches without anything in my digestive system.3
The good news is that since my last hospitalization, Froedtert has changed to an “on-demand” approach to patient meals, meaning a patient calls the kitchen at any time during the day/evening and orders a meal then. It’s a great change, but I have to wonder what took so long to implement this. Read the rest of this entry »
- These experiences and observations definitely cover the good, the bad and even the ugly ... [↩]
- Not a surprise, given I have Crohn’s and knowing that what, when and how I eat directly impact the management of the disease. [↩]
- The worst was the 14+ hour stretch between dinner and breakfast. When it comes to Crohn’s, you need every bit of nutrition your body can absorb, but waste over half of every 24 hours with an empty stomach (nothing being digested) and it’s no wonder my weight drops and my disease becomes more irritated while hospitalized. [↩]
