Roommates in the Hospital

A year prior to my surgery I had a 9 day hospital stay in our local hospital. My roommate was a homeless woman. Needless to say, that was interesting and quite telling. I had my surgery performed a year later at a teaching hospital in a large metro area 2 hours from home. Every room in that hospital was a private room. It was very civilized.

Sue

For my first surgery I had my own room. When I was readmitted I was roomed with an older gentleman who was in Vietnam. He too also had a temp colostomy bag because he was shot and they couldn't save the part of the colon that was damaged.

I was in a two person room one time during my hospitalizations and the gentleman they put in next to me was blind and on a ton of meds. He was in the bed nearest the door. Every time I pushed the call button, a nurse would come in, ask what was needed, and he would say what he needed and completely ignore me. It actually got pretty funny after a while. Fortunately for me, it was only a day or so that I was in that room, then I got shifted over to a private room. That hospital has since been reconstructed and now every room is a private room.

Tell them you've had staph. Until they run the cultures to make sure you don't have an active infection you are clear!! Also, I NEVER get a roommate until they rule out c. diff and God knows they test you for that every freakin' time you go in. AND, I've NEVER come up positive.

This past stay with the surgeries and all I was able to keep a secret for a long long time. My mother in law is the chief nurse of the OR at the military hospital - where I had surgery. She couldn't be in my OR but was sure to set me up with all the best nurses, anesthesia, etc. I never peeped a word to my surgeon or my nurses on the ward - I did NOT want special treatment b/c of her. Well, after going to the OR multiple times and staying so dang long in the hospital my doctor got wind of it and BOY WAS SHE PISSED I hadn't told her. I should have had a private room, yadda yadda yadda. I had to be put on a "command interest" list that was reviewed every morning. The floor supervisors would come check on me, the 2nd in command of the hospital came to my room - EXACTLY why I didnt' want to tell anyone! FRICK.

Anyway, roommates is the topic. My 2nd to last roommate had cancer and it had spread to her brain. She had surgery and her husband told her he wouldn't be there before she went in b/c he didn't want to sit there all day waiting for her. Have the nurse call him when you get back to the room!? ***? I would kick my husband's butt!

Both hospital stays for hubby were in (thankfully) private rooms.

I agree with you that it seems incredibly unsafe and a big health hazard to share a tiny room divided by nothing but a curtain and a shared bathroom when you are in the hospital for something as serious as we are! In fact, my last surgery I came home and discovered after consistent vomiting and exhaustion that my bowels were not frozen up... I in fact had caught a VIRUS! Having seen no one but my parents since I'd been home, gee I wonder where that virus came from?! Must have been a roommate. Gross.

My very first visit to the hospital the gastro floor was entirely full so I was staying in a bed on the neuro floor. For a couple days since I was out of whack from all the drugs and trying to do nothing but sleep, I kept hearing my roommate talking and I just assumed she'd always had visitors. Later when I regained my mind again, I learned that she TALKED TO HERSELF, all day and also all night. She's regularly ask aids and nurses where her cats were, and why the dogs wouldn't stop jumping on her bed. Eventually I discovered she had dementia.

But that got worse... not only did she have dementia but she also had a serious liver disease, and since our beds were separated by nothing but a curtain, I had to listen to a doctor come in and tell her that she wasn't going to survive and that she'd probably die within the next couple weeks. I was crying so hard and I was so scared for her! And ever WORSE... she was so out of her mind that she didn't quite understand the doctor, and he had to repeat it a number of times, and revisit her and tell her over and over again. God it was so awful!!

Another time, my roommate had a daughter who was mentally challenged and she would stick her head from behind the curtain and stare at me ALL day long... that was the most awkward situation I think I'd ever been in. Bottom line is I think everyone should have their own room. I know that'd be incredibly hard to do for a lot of reasons but I guess you don't know how necessary it is until you're sharing the room yourself.

Crosby, you reminded me of something -- one time I was having a bunch of elderly roommates in a row (I was hospitalized for 18 days that time), and I said to one of the nurses that I worried one of them would die and I didn't know how I'd deal with it. She was very young and quickly moved to "reassure" me, "Oh, don't worry if your roommate's going to die, we move you to another room."

That was not at all what I meant ... it was more like I'd talked to them, I'd be so sad, and how would I deal w/that while being sick myself?

A few weeks ago I was on a panel that was for a training for volunteers on visiting people in the hospital (something from my partner's work). Another person on the panel was a chaplain, and I told that story, and then he said that very often when he's called to a room because someone is dying or died, there's a roommate, kind of cowering in the corner..... it's not at all unusual that he ends up attending more to the roommate .... (guess at his hospital they don't move people as well as that nurse assured me....)

I've had issues w/a commode and roommate's visitors too.... and also a rommate w/dementia (who had a "sitter" who was there all night to make sure she didn't fall out of bed); that woman thought I was male (I have short hair) and sometimes when I walked by to go to the bathroom she thought I was going to attack her, she'd scream, "Get HIM away from me."

I just realized I wrote, 3 days for each collectomy, as if I had more than one collectomy. I meant coloscopy. 5 coloscopies and one colectomy. Sheesh.

This thread is great, I'm glad it got started! My first surgery/hospital stay, I had a great roommate. She was a bit older than I, but we had been diagnosed with the UC the same year. She was in because of a bad flare, and we had a lot of good talks about the way UC affects day-to-day living and how we cope with it (well, "coped" for me- I was finally living UC free!) We are still in contact every now and then and I've been sharing with her what going through the surgeries has been like, as she feels that she will be heading down that road soon. So, I was blessed with a great roommate that time!

My second surgery I had a Russian woman who I at first thought was whiney, but then she turned out to be pretty nice.

When I went in for the abcess surgery.... that's a whole nother story! I was in the step down unit for about 7 days, I think. There were three other patients there besides myself. The two across the room from me were great- I felt a special connection with one of them, a lady who I later found out was battling cancer, and we would wave and smile at each other and give thumbs up when we saw the other one getting up to walk or whateer. The first person I had directly next to me was this crazy lady from Brooklyn (great accent) who just talked and talked, either on the phone or to her visitors or to whoever would listen, really. I was out of it most of the time, but when I was awake I couldn't wait for her to leave. When she finally did go, I thought maybe there would be some peace and quiet for a bit.... boy, was I wrong! That night a guy got wheeled in who had had back surgery. I guess there wasn't room for him anywhere else and he needed to be in a step down or something. I don't know, but he was crazy. The whole next day he was constantly saying things to the female nurses that, to me, seemed borderline harrasment, and he put up a big fuss saying that the hospital was going to make him pay them for the medications he had brought from home- they had been brought down to the pharmacy, checked out and then marked with a sticker, which he was sure meant they would be billing him. He went on and on and I just wanted to tell him to shut up. Lol. I could tell the nurses were getting aggravated as well, though I admire the way they kept their calm and explained very articulately (like three times) that he would not be billed for bringing his own meds. That evening, I'm not sure what happened, but I guess he had a drain and when they were emptying it or something, the nurses did something (I could not figure out what) that just ticked this guy off- he freaked out telling them they were being very unsanitary and that they were going to get him infected and kill him. He got so worked up that they called his doctors to come explain to him that whatever it was that had happened was not going to kill him. Then the nurse manager had to come and try to calm him down as well. He told them he was going to pull the drain out himself, right then, because the nurses had infected him with staph. The doctor was like, "Listen, your hands are not clean. You are the one who will be getting yourself infected if you do that." And the guy responded, "My hands are completely clean! You don't know what you're talking about!" Followed by a lot of cursing and yelling and whatever. I was on the other side of the curtain about to have a panic attack- I started crying and breathing heavy and getting very scared that this guy was going to get physical or something. My dad stuck his head around the corner at one point and asked if the man could lower his voice, you're upsetting the other patients. The man cussed my dad out and I got even more upset. So..... after the doctors and nurses calmed him down with lots of reassuring and whatnot, the man finally agreed to stay the night, but said he was going to leave first thing in the morning. Thank goodness. (Of course the docs wanted him to stay, I think the back surgery he had just had was pretty major.) He checked himself out the next day, against medical advice. I sometimes wonder what happened to him, if he healed properly or ended up in another hospital...

My daughter has had several roommates. In the beginning when my daughter was first dx with UC I kind of felt bad for the roommates since my daughter was in severe pain all day and night. She was only 3 years old, she screamed and cried all of the time. She never slept longer than an hour. Nobody could rest and honestly it wasn't fair for the other children in the room. Some were recovery from major surgery.
Hospital rooms are the worst in my daughters hospital. We shared a bathroom not only with our roommate but with a connecting room on the other side of us. So that's 4 sick patients sharing one toilet and shower. plus I've walked in on a father once taking a shower, which is not allowed. The parents have their own parent bathroom on another floor to take showers and change. It was disgusting, he was completely naked and just stood there staring at me...ugh.
After the first two weeks there my daughter contracted cdiff. I learned my lesson, the next day my husband brought our portable little potty. Now anytime we enter the hospital I immediately ask for one of the portable potties that look like a seat. I forget what it's called, but I do not let my daughter to use their bathrooms anymore.
It's a huge health risk especially for people with Crohn's or Colitis.
We had one roommate once that we called the "spitting bandit". He would try to spit on us anytime we walked by. I had to complain and have him moved after two days of trying to run past him to get of the room.
I HATE HOSPITALS...; )

Here i am in hospitsl again . The woman there til ladt night was really ok and the new one is also ok, just out of surgery so mostly sleeping. Pretty lucky considering the history of psychos here.