Chapter 6 Roommates

The Ellison Building is one of the older buildings on the MGH campus. As such, it still has small rooms that have 2 patients per room. This is not ideal for many reasons. When I arrived, I had the luck of being placed in a room with a bed by the window. On the 16th floor, the views of Boston were beautiful.

My first roommate was a very elderly Asian woman who I believe had lung cancer. She was very weak and struggled to clear her lungs. It was painful to listen to. There is an interesting Asian culture that apparently says your family must spend all day every day with you. She had 2 daughters who would arrive at the start of visiting hours (9am-9pm) and stay all day and evening. They would sit there all day, just staring at their mom. They were very pleasant and very quiet and I felt bad for them as it was clear to everyone but them that mom was slipping away. They had some grand idea that mom could go to assisted living. Two days after I arrived, mom went home to hospice care. I hope she passed peacefully.

And then the family from hell arrived.

Eunice was a Korean woman with liver cancer.
Her husband was Peter. She had a son, daughter and daughter-in-law. Visitor “rules” say only 2 people at a time can visit. Just their family alone was over by 2. But the “rules” did not matter…to them or the staff.The hard part about this family is that they were very nice people, just absolutely ignorant of the fact there was another person in the room.

Peter was a born again Christian who tried to convert almost every person who came into the room. He was a Pastor at some local church. They prayed a lot over Eunice. They also had this bizarre thing about standing behind her bed and taking pictures of everyone. They did this with all of their visitors. The 9-9 visiting hours meant nothing to them. The 2 person limit also meant nothing. One morning, the son arrived just after 7am…one night Dad did not leave until 10:55pm.

They would arrive with backpacks and laptops, grocery bags from Whole Foods, small coolers and an assortment of stuff I could not see. All of these bags and such would end up on the floor along the wall across from the foot of her bed. There were not enough chairs for them so they took the one chair from my side and also sat on the floor. One of the chairs would be placed next to her bed, right in front of the bathroom door. This made it difficult for me to get into the bathroom as someone always had to move. It was very uncomfortable for me. They were apologetic and moved quickly…sometimes not fast enough. If you recall, one of my issues was that I was unsteady on my feet. This made navigating the bags and coolers more difficult. Again, they would apologize, move things but then just kept doing it. It is not a stretch to say I tolerated WAY more than was necessary. But I also had to share this room with these people so I tired to live in harmony.

Every afternoon, groups of people would arrive to visit. Some were family, some were friends and then there was the groups of young church people. At times, there could be over 10 people jammed in the room. One afternoon, I had gone for a CT scan and when I returned, 9 people had to leave the room so I could actually walk back in. This was just unnecessary. And lets not forget I looked like crap, ass cheeks hanging out the back of my johnny, trying to navigate the obstacle course back to my bed.

They had parties. The first one was a gourmet donut party. A group arrived with 2 dozen super fancy donuts and they all whooped it up and enjoyed. They did offer me a donut…I declined. These afternoon visits would last for 3-4 hours. Eunice never got any rest. Neither did I.The gelato party…this was the day of my chest pain attack. If you recall, I was put on bed rest for the day. A group arrived in the afternoon with fancy gelato for the family. Once again, the group was loud and large and had no regard for the fact I was trying to rest. It’s not like Eunice and Peter did not know what happened to me…they were there!
The final event was the live stream from Korea gender reveal party of the first grandchild. This was a big deal. The room was packed. The group was loud. The staff did nothing. I really tried to respect their culture and allow them to celebrate but seriously? There was a family room on the floor. Eunice could have gone with her family to that room and had plenty of room to celebrate. But as much as the doctors and nurses encouraged her to get up and walk, she barely did. She also complained about being tired. Really?

There was a night when there were so many people and so much stuff on the floor that there was no way I could get past all of this. I called for my nurse. I sat on my bed patiently waiting for her, hoping I would not lose control. Tessie the PCA arrived and in one swift moment, cleared the gauntlet so I could get to the bathroom. This was the last time I was going to be nice about this. I had no privacy, no dignity, just large groups of people watching as I tried to make it to the bathroom.
And then the following day it all erupted. There was as usual a large group of visitors. It was dinner time. The nurse supervisor came in and told the group that the limit was 2 visitors and everyone had to leave. Peter was shocked…said he had been given “permission” to have people because he was special or something. He got very defensive and asked where the complaints were coming from. The obvious answer was from me. But I had not made any formal complaints.
The supervisor left the room and then their evening nurse came in. He then told the family that security would remove them if they did not comply. It was intense. After he left, I got up and went over and told the family that I had no idea what just happened and that I had not complained. I’m not sure they believed me but at this point I did not care.

So everyone but Peter left and then he began what was his nightly routine at 8:45 pm. He would summon the nurse and begin asking for Eunice to get her morphine dose. I know everything about this. She could have a long acting dose and a short acting dose. Peter would then ask the same questions every night. He would then begin to eat his dinner…at 8:45pm. Early on in her stay, Peter might pack up and be gone by 9:30. Or 10, 10:30…11:00. Nobody made him leave. This was just so wrong. I blame him but I also blame the staff. They made all these threats and did nothing. I came to learn this was not the first time the staff had dealt with this family. In previous stays, they had the same issues.

We live in a world of no consequences.

In a fun little twist, they knew I was leaving and asked to be moved to the window bed. Request denied.