Little lessons learned on this journey!

I learned little lessons every day about hospital life and how to endure and try to make it more pleasant or at least easier to endure.

1) Always be nice to your nurses, even if they aren't the most pleasant to you, you are in a lot of pain and really feel like telling them to do some place not so nice, or they are looking at you with a very long needle wondering "where are they going to stick me now" :)  Kindness can get you a lot of places in the hospital.  Especially the midnight and 4am ice chip runs the nurses would make for me because that could be the only thing that sounded good to me many days.  Ice chips are the one thing that got me through my hospital stays and the only thing I miss about the hospital.  I love Sonic's ice, but it isn't nearly as good as the hospital ice chips.   

** In all honesty, I have a true and humble respect for nurses!!  I could NOT do what they do!  I adored every nurse I had during my transplant period, minus one creepy male nurse:)** 

2) You will love the hospital if you like Ensure, Mighty Milk, and Boost!!  I was basically force fed and threatened with it by my doctors, nurses, and some family members :)  Needless to say, I was not so pleasant when it came to trying to consume those.  I never finished one, and I am fairly sure I dumped some down the sink so I wouldn't have to finish them.  I will forever be haunted by those drinks.

3) I never would have seen the launch of Oprah's TV network OWN.  After a month in the hospital, anything different on television is a blessing!  I am fairly sure it was in the middle of the night, when I was always awake, but who am I kidding...  You never get rest in a hospital :)

4) Never think you will get rest in a hospital!  You can become so backwards that you do not remember whether it is day or night, what time it is, or even sometimes, how long you have been in one pair of PJ's. Yes, I  know that is disgusting, but some days it was true for me :)  I generally regulated with my 5am wake up call to have blood drawn!  What a way to start the day/end the night when you never really slept to begin with.

"Sleep, riches, and health to be truly enjoyed must be interrupted."  ~Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, Flower, Fruit, and Thorn

** More to come, of course in no particular order.  I apologize in advance for my story telling skills.  I can be challenged in this area, but they can still be funny :) **