• Barry Lewis: Hard for patients to rest; they keep waking you up

  • A doctor friend of mine told me, "Hospitals are no place to rest."
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    No truer words were ever spoken.
    I know this to be fact because a not-so-funny thing happened in the middle of our vacation last week. My wife suddenly got sick and had to be rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery.
    She's feeling much better. Thanks for asking.
    I'd like to share with you why she was in the hospital. But unlike infamous WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, both of whom seem to take perverse pleasure in divulging secrets with little regard for punishment, I have a bit more concern. Maybe it's because they might only face life in prison for their tell-all attempts while I would face the immediate wrath of a wounded wife.
    Still, I hope that despite remaining silent as to why Bonnie had to be treated at a major health care facility (located just north of Albany), I might be able to convince hospital staff everywhere that some level of rest and relaxation might actually benefit their patients.
    I don't mean spa relaxation.
    Just a little common-sense courtesy for those in recovery.
    Are there special instructions in the medical handbook that requires nurses, aides, lab technicians and other ancillary health care providers to interrupt any semblance of a patient's sound sleep in the middle of the night to ask that pressing critical question: "How are we feeling?"
    How would that nurse feel if I went to her bed at her home in the middle of the night, turned on the light and asked, while pushing, poking and probing: "How are we feeling?"
    Want to guess the answer?
    The reason why the 3 a.m. wake-up is so annoying is because it follows the 11:30 p.m. wake-up and proceeds the 6 a.m. wake-up. I've been told that these late-night chats are all part of patient assessment.
    You know, checking for the vital signs: temperature, pulse, respiration and blood pressure.
    Understanding that my medical training is limited to being the first-born son of a Jewish mother (which puts me just below a second-year resident), I'm pretty sure that anyone's vital signs will be compromised at 3 a.m.
    Funny thing is, if you do wake up in the middle of the night and you need help, try pushing that red button they give you. All it does is change the volume on the television.
    Couple of caveats here.
    My wife got great medical care. And while her surgery was serious, it wasn't life-threatening. Big difference.
    And the staff allowed me to sleep in her room. They even provided me with a lounge chair and a pair of scrubs to be more comfortable. Very nice.
    What's really amazing is how empowered you can be wearing those scrubs.
    Since they got me up at 3 in the morning as well, I figured I'd make myself useful.
    So I performed two gastric bypasses, treated a lady for a herniated disk and took the lead on an appendectomy.
    Imagine how much more I could have accomplished had I been well-rested with a good night's sleep?
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