"Fled is that music; do I wake or sleep?" (Keats)

 .....The hospital I went to claims to have been voted one of the top fifty in the country.  Perhaps the employees were told that it was one of their assigned duties to do the voting--as many times as possible--or else report to the unemployment office...

As far as I was concerned, it ought to have been voted one of the bottom fifty in the country.  While I was there suffering from who knows what, I received no care whatsoever.  The flyer on the wall in my room claims that the patient was to receive care for any of the "special" needs the patient required.  Perhaps the need to use the facility is not deemed to be of any special importance, because when I rung up the nurses' station and told them I needed some help in getting there, I had to wait 45 minutes and still no one came.  When I rung them up again, I conceded that they were busy and I offered to get off the bed and crawl to the bathroom on my hands and knees, and then crawl back to my bedside and stay on the floor until someone decided to come with the assistance I required--an elbow to hold on to.

.....Another "special need" I have is the need to sleep in the dark, and so to keep the bright light in the hall from flooding my room I asked that the door be closed behind anyone leaving after having to enter the room to tend to the guy in the next bed.  And this guy snored all night, leaving the TV on.  Did anyone think to turn it off?  Apparently the night watch people did not have thinking as one of their skills.

 

.....And then there is the "special need" I have for sleeping from 11pm to 7am.  I take a sleeping pill before nodding off. But then during those hours, a nurse comes in, wakes you up in order to take your "vitals".  Then you try to fall back to sleep, but 10 minutes later, you are wakened again so that they can "take some blood".  I began to believe they were vampires.  Then you try to fall back to sleep, but 10 minutes later, you are wakened by a nurse who insists it was time to take medication--pills--.  What is the need for that at 4am?  But, of course, when any of these so-called caregivers leave the room, they leave the door open and the hall light floods my area once, or twice, or three or four times again.  I asked the nurse why I needed the sleeping pill when I actually could have used some opium--like Omar K. in his "Ruby Yacht".

 

OK. I could go on and on about the "care" I got, but decided instead to offer you my sulking poem:

What hostile wind in time's spinning vortex
Blew pain into my life?  What sullen lark
Gave up its joyful song?  What Cain slew
My way in wavering mist and seeling dark?
And all my love, like wine or blood, has drained,
And heart-red hues to ashen white have turned.
The tender seeds so lovingly engrained
Wither in my earth, dust-seared and burned.
Where have they fled, the sparkling springtime years,
The buds of May and summer's damasked roses?
What god's ambrosia mingles with my tears
As sun-vined August droops, and night encloses?