Jim Shorts || Should I Go to the Hospital? How To Know For Sure
take these steps and never wonder again
Don’t worry, the question in the title is rhetorical. I feel fine.
Here’s me at the hospital in 2017, when I manifestly did not feel fine:
You don’t ever want to go to the hospital. Trust me, nothing good ever happens there. They poke you with needles and tell you things that you absolutely never want to hear. There is only bad news at hospitals. Even when they say something good, like “you’re not going to die” what they really mean is “you’re not going to die yet.” The good news is still bad.
But sometimes you still have to go to the hospital. A hospital is just a building where all the people who can fix what’s currently wrong with you all hang out in. I’m going to tell you the steps you need to take in order to find out when it’s time to get their help.
Note: this is only a useful checklist if you don’t feel very good and have some doubts about whether or not you should be going to the hospital. If you should obviously, definitely be at the hospital right now, please just go (for example, if you can’t walk, if you’re wounded and bleeding, or if another, unexpected person is coming out of you).
Take a walk.
It’s okay if it’s a short walk. The purpose is to “get the wiggles out” and “shake out the cobwebs”
Drink a glass of water.
You don’t have to be one of those guys crawling through the desert with vultures circling above him to be dehydrated
Have a snack.
Try to make it healthy and high in protein to get energy and fill your tum-tum.
Take an ibuprofen.
Tylenol or aspirin will do.
Take a nap.
Just a little one. Naps of around 20 minutes are ideal.
If none of these things work, then you should probably go to the hospital, just to be safe. Alternatively, you can call one of your smarter friends and tell them what’s wrong with you and they will say “I’m sure you’re fine” and “you’re okay” or “you’re always worried about something” and you’ll feel better.
Or, conversely, you won’t feel better and Life Is Just Like That Now. This can happen even when you do go to the hospital.
COMMENCING PERSONAL ANECDOTE
I had my brain thing and I had a neurosurgeon who was very good at surgery but not very good at other things (like talking to people, or looking at people in the eye, or being any comfort whatsoever). He retired and I got a new one who is very good at those other things (I don’t know how good he is at surgery, fortunately). He is so good at talking, they actually put him on video.
I asked him about some of the lingering ailments I had after my brain surgeries and radiation therapies were completed. I told him I had memory problems, lingering and occasional headaches, balance issues, and an itchy shunt.
His response: “Yeah.”
I think I was hoping for something more robust. I don’t know what, exactly, I was hoping for. I asked if I just had to live with those things now.
“Yeah. Sorry.”
I think he elaborated a little further about how I was lucky I didn’t have some of the more irksome complications from brain tumors (for example, death), but I was busy making these faces as the camera slowly zoomed in on me.