Hospital or Museum?

I have spent far too much time in hospitals over the past month. Not for treatment you understand but fulfilling my commitment as a paid up member of the sandwich generation. Just when you think you have got rid of the kids you notice that your parents have decided to revert to their childhood, well the part of childhood which involves dependency.

With each visit to the various departments in the various hospitals (I am currently in Cardiff where the building is older but the parking cheaper) there is a growing sense that I am engaging in time travel. Immersed as I am in the world of energy medicine and self responsibility these monoliths are like temples to misunderstanding. In truth they are more like banks, a model for making money by keeping people unhealthy.

To enter the museum I weave a path through the smokers in hospital gowns using their intravenous drip trolleys as support.  As I walk through the corridors the believers in germ theory are encouraged to anoint themselves in anti-bacterial hand wash. Apparently this has to be done several times before reaching your destination. In this place nothing breeds fear like germs, although in my view nothing breeds germs like fear.

The only means of identifying the decade in a hospital is by the quality of the coffee on sale and the uniforms of the nurses, but as far as I can tell nothing has changed in years. The continuing medical model is based around symptom suppression using drugs or a scalpel. (It would not be too surprising to seea doctor sawing off a leg of a salty old sea dog in the corridor). The availability and distribution of drugs has increased and the enthusiasm for operations is at near fever pitch (an important part of NHS budgets depends upon performing lots of operations (kerching)).

Despite the moaning from my parents generation the most powerful healing element in a hospital appears to remain intact and that is the love and care of the nursing staff. Quite literally thankless tasks are performed with good humour and skill, and love as an energy is far more potent than any pharmaceutical.

The doctors seem to be playing in a real time chemistry lab. My Mum is on eleven different tablets at the moment with at least seven aiming to counteract the effects of four, although the seven have side effects themselves which will no doubt require further medication (kerching). Hypnotised by the all knowing men in white coats each new pill is received with excitement and a sense of vindication. My current visit to my father-in-law is the result of a fall which may have been the result of his latest medication reducing his blood pressure too fast. But not to worry there is another tablet for that. (The idea that blood pressure can be reduced with proper hydration is neither glamorous nor profitable).

I am sure we will, in the not too distant future, and in fact the present in my case, look at these institutions with disbelief. However well intentioned and however sophisticated that model has become it has clearly outlived its purpose. Visiting these places has been like going back in time to the scene of a famous battle as it rages, the participants sacrificing themselves to an idea they have probably never even questioned.

Despite it all these temples are still witness to humanity in all its guises. The compassion, the despair and even the joy.

I just prefer to get my dose of the human experience elsewhere,

Love.

Bill