Package Contents

Anyone who has had a recent hospital experience knows that you have the option of taking home almost anything that comes into your room during your stay — a box of tissues, a package of gauze, a pair of surgical scissors… whatever.  Either that or it gets thrown out.  Okay, an opened box or package… fine.  But surgical scissors or forceps?  Presumably, it costs more to sterilize than to throw out.  Go figure.   And, no matter what, you or your insurance company will be charged for it.

So, Nyel always has me pack it all up.  His motto is: “Waste not want not.”  That, of course, applies to everything in our daily lives, hospitals notwithstanding.   Nyel re-purposes, recycles, reuses and, when it comes to  medical supplies and hospital policies, he feels that home stockpiling beats the throw-away alternative.

Now that we are home and have the services of home health nurses and physical and occupational therapists, necessary medical supplies are ordered by the nurse and paid for by Medicare.  The waste is absolutely appalling — beginning with the packaging.  Box after box of medical supplies are delivered to our door.  (I think we are single-handedly keeping the cardboard recycling bins overstuffed.)

Tah Dah!! The Contents!

Yesterday, for example, Nyel received a package of antibiotic ribbon which I use each day to pack in his “wound” (the sloowwly healing surgical site from his aborted April 28th surgery).  The ribbon in the 7 x 4 inch foil package was 17 inches long by 1 inch wide — about the length of a wide shoelace for a child’s shoe.  It was sent in a 9 inch wide by 12 inch long by 7 inch deep cardboard box and  “protected” by a  folded brown paper eight feet long and 15 inches wide.

Talk about wasteful!! The mind boggles.  We’ve received five or six boxes of supplies just this week,  similarly packaged.  Our Medicare dollars at work.  OMG!  How ironic that my “waste not want not” husband is somehow generating this ridiculous extravagance!  It used to be that when I heard the term “medical waste” I thought of hazardous materials that were collected in bright red containers at hospitals.  Now?  Not so much.  Medical waste is delivered right to our house by FedEx or UPS.  Almost every day!

The Great Bed of Ware — one of the largest beds in the world

Today I’m thinking about beds.  Not a subject I usually give much thought to but, as it turns out, beds are a complex and fairly interesting subject — probably even more interesting than the reason my thoughts have turned in that direction.

In recent months, several visitors to our house have had occasion to take a look at our bedroom — not in itself an unusual circumstance as you must enter the bedroom to reach the downstairs bathroom. Plus, prior to the 1940s, the bedroom was the parlor and I often show off its original (1869) ceiling paper and coal-burning fireplace.

Vincent Van Gogh’s Bed

No, the unusual part of these recent visits has been the remarks about our bed.  “You and Nyel BOTH sleep in THAT bed?” has been the gist of it.  Truth-to-tell, until these comments/questions began, I had never given the bed a thought.  It’s the same bed that my grandmother bought in the 1940s from a friend in Ocean Park.  At that time it had an old-fashioned cotton mattress and bed springs.

In the early 1980s when my folks, in their turn, gave up the “master bedroom” upstairs and moved down to this bedroom on the main floor, they replaced the old springs and mattress with a new box spring and mattress.  Before those could be installed, however, they had to have Floyd Rank add six inches to the bed frame to accommodate those modern bed accouterments.  Neither Nyel nor I have ever given its “double” width status a second thought — except to notice that “doubles” are now referred to as “fulls” — apparently to allay the thought that they are meant for double occupancy.

John and Yoko’s Honeymoon Bed

Just now I looked up the History of Beds on Wikipedia and found that beds not only come in all sizes and shapes, but they also have a variety of names.  Here are some:  Adjustable bed, air bed, bassinet, box-bed brass bed, bunk bed, captain’s bed, camp bed (cot), canopy bed, curtained bed, daybed, futon, four poster bed, hammoc, hideaway bed, hospital bed, infant bed (crib), iron bed, kanga bed-stove, loft bed. Manjaa, mourning bed, Murphy bed, Ottoman bed, pallet, platform bed, roll-away bed, rope bed, sofabed, state bed, toddler bed, trundle bed, vibrating bed, waterbed.

Wow!  Who knew?  More to the point, who cares?  In this house there are three double beds, one cot, two twins — plenty under most circumstances, doncha think?  As for the three doubles… snuggle up, I say!