Sorry for the delay. . .
Okay. . . how do I write this? To my beloved Polish friends, please do not be offended my this post. You must understand that my experience is just that, my experience and in no way, share or form am I judging you or the Polish culture. I love you all and I love Poland. With that said, I must blog about a few things I found to be funny, strange, and sometimes just sad to me.
So here is the first:
The wake up call:
6 a. m. - The lights are turned on, the nurses come in and start to fill up big bowls of water for each person. The patients (me NOT included) "rip" (okay, a bit of an exaggeration, but not much) their clothes off and start to wash themselves. Remember, NO privacy screens and a few times the door was open just a bit. Of course, my bed was the closest to the door . . . :) Here I am, washing under my night gown. The nurse comes to me the first time and says, "You must take all of your clothes off to wash!" My response, "No way! I am an American! We don't stripe in front of strangers!" She just laughed and walked away. Every morning this is how I was woken up. Lights, striptease, wash, change bedding, bed pan time. Yes, I said bed pan. There is no bathroom in the room.
7 a.m. - Time for the nurses to come in and straighten the room out. I got yelled at everyday because they did not like the fact that I had a lot of stuff. There was NO way that I was going to do what my other roommates were doing. Stare at the ceiling all day and evening just to wait to go to sleep. I had books to read and movies to watch! :) Anyway. After a few days, the nurses just went on to give me a disgusted look as visitors came and left more gifts for me. . . where do I put them, under my bed? :)
8 a.m. I wish I could have recorded the sound of 9 doctors shuffling down the hall grunting, talking, and discussing what they were going to do. They came to our room and surrounded each bed an talked about teach patient. I was always last and to me it sounded like they sped up their speech just so it would be harder for me understand them. But I had a secret weapon named Dr. Dudko! Dr. Dudko not only did my operation, but he was my self appointed, personal advocate and let me know what was going on. After the "Doctor Brigade" came through, he would slip back in for 30 seconds and tell me what would happen next. It was a very interesting "dance" the doctors and nurses did everyday. The doctors expected clean, tidy rooms and the nurses were afraid to hear that every room was not perfect.
9 a.m. Breakfast - "How many pieces of bread to you want?" was the only question I was asked. The bread was white and I cannot have it with my PCOS so I had a friend get me bread that I can eat, but it was hard to hear the nurses say in the hallway, "Americans just don't like our Polish food, pity." That made me sad. The four things I need to be careful to not eat very much of, white bread, white rice, white macaroni, and potatoes were the main staple of the hospital diet. I was blessed by my Polish church as many brought me other food to eat!
Nothing going on until the evening when I decided to go to bed . . . That was my day for much of my 6 days in the hospital!
I would not have made it had it not been all of the visitors that I had! Panni Complain marveled at how me, a foreigner could know so many Polish people and that I had so many visitors! Most of our conversations were about how good God is and she got to hear every word!
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