Changing Everything in the Hospital Room

Slowly, day-by-day, we are making improvements to my father’s tiny hospital room. It started with a king sized down pillow. Then better toilet paper, real Kleenex and food from the outside. No hospital gowns for Ed. He has discovered that a t-shirt and shorts with pockets that can hold his heart monitor work best for day and sleeping. Of course his own socks, entertainment systems, coffee from Starbucks, towels and bath mats from my house and condiments. Today took the cake with a new memory foam gel mattress topper and a special case that holds it on like a fitted sheet.

All these improvements and it still is a pain in the butt to have to live there. But the best improvement of all is when people he likes come to visit. My cousin Sarah, who is tops on his list came today from Raleigh and spent a good few hours. It is the best way to while away the time between naps.

Last night my father finally got a doctors’s order he likes- no one is to enter his room between midnight and six am unless he calls! That doesn’t mean he is able to sleep, but at least no one is waking him if he is asleep!

So with all these creature comforts filling up his tiny room I was able to go to see Mary Poppins Returns tonight with Carter. It was the perfect escape from my hospital redecorator/case manager/nutrition specialist/ entertaining daughter role at the hospital. I can see the progress. Six days down and four more until the procedure when we hope for everything to be on the way up from there.

I am running out of space to add anything to his room so I hope he stops thinking of improvements. Of course I also have the every other day home laundry service to put away, but so much better to be in clean clothes everyday. I am thinking I could sell these memory foam things in the hallways along with all my other improvements. I have told him that he has to live with the bordered Wall paper they have in his room.