To ask for your most awful hospital ward companion stories?

[stripeyronnie]

Currently on a postnatal ward. Only been here an hour. So far someone has eaten reheated curry which I can still smell. Next doors toddler is watching peppa feckin pig on loudspeaker and a different toddler is opening my curtain whilst playing with a fire engine with siren on. Luckily baby is used to being at home with similarly annoying siblings (we've been readmitted) so is sleeping through it all. DH has been dispatched home for earplugs and other things to keep me sane.

Re admitted post abdominal surgery to another hospital. General ward. Woman 2 beds down from me would shout "Help me" all night. Every 5 mins or so. The nurse would go to her and she would ask where she was...she would be told and then 5 minutes later would shout again. I have massive sympathy for the lady she was obviously confused but I was very ill and sleep deprived after 2 days. Nil by mouth and minimal pain relief too. In the end I lost it when my parents came to visit me.. ended up pulling out my cannula and trying to make a run for it. I felt panicked and claustrophobic suddenly. They should have put the lady in a side room or on a more suitable ward. Or had someone to stay with her..so she didn't get frightened and shout

Tonsils out around 1973: women in the next bed was smoking, the Nurse got her an ashtray..

Not me but baby DS was in hospital (day surgery, discharged later that afternoon thank God, no way I could have stayed overnight...). The neighbouring cubicle had a young child (3ish) with a severe dental infection. The mother was absolutely awful. Spent most of the time on the phone (on loud speaker, naturally) swearing at full volume about her ex (kid's dad), on the phone to her social worker about the fact the kid had to spend another night in hospital and she was staying with her so wouldn't be home for her electronic tag curfew again. Kid kicked off (as a 3 year old who have been ignored all would do) and she was shouting, swearing and even smacked the kid.

Several of us (children's ward with 10 bays) had individually expressed concerns to the staff who assured us it was all being monitored and appropriate safeguarding procedures were firmly in place. After she had hit the poor kid, security came and made her leave and a HCA sat and watched peppa pig with the kid.

As someone with some severe hospital anxiety and NOT happy about a possible hospital stay when I give birth.... I should not have ready this thread 😥😭

I was induced with DS but he didn’t want to move and I was there for 2 days before he even began to move. The lady in the bed next to me had lots of visitors,including children who kept opening the curtain ( often while I was being examined, This was in addition to the ladies who were in Labour and quite understandably noisy so I had had no sleep at all and was getting a bit grumpy.
Eventually I had enough and when the MW came to examine me I said not unless I could go somewhere with more privacy. She argued for a bit , while the curtains were frequently opened but then agreed I could go to a delivery room for the examination but then would have to go back to the ward. I agreed Was examined, “right, let’s take you back to the ward then!”
“No thank you, I’m staying here”
After trying to get me to move and me refusing she went to get a more senior MW. I explained the situation as she asked “do you feel like you are about to start Labour?” (Wink wink). Oh yes, I’m sure I am I replied.
Well you had better stay there then. Got a lovely nights sleep that night and enjoyed my Private en-suite room before going into Labour next morning, nice and rested
Same thing happened a few hours later “ right, let’s move you onto the ward now” “No,thank you”

Exhausted after an emergency c section, 10 years ago, as I was getting to know and love with my new young son, I became aware the woman opposite me was quietly unravelling.

She was rapidly moved to a side room and I saw her once again as I was leaving, tearful, hair unkempt with her partner in the hospital lift. I could see her trying to hide from us as we took our baby off to our new life. I always wonder what happened to her and whether it all turned out okay.

Postnatal ward. Partner of woman in the next bed thought he was God's gift, sat there all day in one chair with his feet up in another talking in foghorn volume to anyone who would listen and trying to get the attention of anyone who wouldn't. Kept calling over the staff just to share with them his observations on life, the universe and everything.

At one point the grandparents brought in the baby's older sister and left her there, and she ran around the ward dodging in and out of curtains while her dad totally ignored her and her mum sat there beaming at him.

I was on a hospital ward opposite a woman who only brought a single copy of Take A Break with her to entertain her for a three-night hospital stay and then just spent the rest of the time pestering other women on the ward. She drove me insane. I’m not especially sociable at the best of times but even less so when I’ve just had surgery and feel like shit, but it soon became clear that everyone else was finding her annoying as well.

Among her more annoying moments:

• She insisted I didn’t really need an op at all because my condition could have been cured with herbal infusions if I’d just done some research and caught it early.
• Every time anyone else took their pain medication (before she’d had her op) she loudly announced that she ‘never took tablets’ as if this was a badge of honour. Then as soon as she came back from surgery she demanded morphine every ten minutes and made theatrical moaning noises all the time.
• She sat on the end of another patient’s bed while the poor girl was finally trying to eat something after feeling sick all day, describing in detail the bowel movement she’d just done.
• She came and pulled the curtains away from round my bed because she said I ‘shouldn’t be moping’. I was on a drip and wearing an oxygen mask at the time having come round from my anaesthetic about 30 minutes previously. On that occasion a nurse did have a proper go at her.
• She also ‘borrowed’ another woman’s book while the other woman was in surgery. When the other woman said ‘Er, did you take that from my bedside table? Because I’m in the middle of reading it’ she denied it and the lady who came round with the toast had to step in and adjudicate.
• Gave her husband and son a loud, detailed and highly personal briefing on exactly what everyone else in the ward was having done and why, with all the symptoms and gory details.

@Hoppinggreen I think I love you a little bit, wish I’d done what you did, I was also induced with my first and had no sleep thanks to noisy/unprivate ward and ended up with a emcs 3days later I was just so tired I couldn’t push

I was in hospital last year with pneumonia. Most of the other patients on my ward were elderly and some had dementia.

One of them slept all day so was wide awake come night time. She would complain that it was a bit dark, and switch all the lights on waking everyone up. Then she would repeatedly call out asking the nurses if her son had been in contact and was he visiting.

This woke up one of the other patients who had dementia. She was such a happy character but got herself so worked up when she thought the other lady was speaking directly to her. She was shouting and screaming back to the other woman who couldn’t make sense of what she was saying (she was a bit deaf) and didn’t understand what she was talking about.

It went on for hours! Luckily by that time I had earplugs to hand so did manage some sleep. I’d never stayed in hospital prior to that and now realise how hospitals are a very difficult place to actually rest in!

I was in hospital having a spinal cord stimulator trial for 4 days last June during the heatwave. I hate hospitals and wasn't ill so it was awful. I couldn't shower and had this massive plastic dressing on my back that was making me itch which was worse because it was so hot.

Every time the man visited the lady in the bed by the window he closed it so I asked for a fan. One night this new woman was admitted and i was behind my curtain, with the fan directed on me, when the curtain got whipped back by an HCA who said "that lady wanted to see who had the fan on!" She spent the rest of the night in bed in her clothes, and her sister put her coat on top of the bed like an extra duvet, while they gave me filthy looks.

The lady in the next bed to me noticed I was crocheting and we were having a chat about that. At 10pm we were told it was time for lights out and to go to sleep. I was glad to go home.

Fucking wards belong in the 1950s when they had staff to actually police them. I discharged myself early after having gallbladder out with big incision due to lack of sleep in these fucking wards. Got an infection and they wanted to re-admit me to that hospital. I told them NO, I'd go for oral ABs and take my chances than go back to that place which was also disgustingly filthy so it's no surprise I got an infection. They sent me to another hospital that has only private rooms.

How they think a shared toilet is good for people who have had huge ops is beyond me.

Trying to breastfeed baby number 4 after an awful pregnancy, emergency c-section with a major blood vessel accidentally cut. Man opposite was ignoring his partner and new baby to watch me breastfeed. I couldn't get up to close the curtains due to the pain, drip and drain. I wanted to cry.

Out of the 3 times I have been in hospital on 2 of them I have ended up sat next to old men who were there to have Botox injected up their aresholes - they went into great detail telling me why and how it would help them! On the 3rd occasion I was looking forward to some peace and quiet for a daycare and had a nutter next to me chewing my ear off all day.
My sister had worse case in Bham women's hospital where a man got on top of his wife in post natal ward demanding she gave him a son as he wasn't happy with his daughter. Horrendous.

Went in for an operation in my early twenties.

I was wheeled down to be anaesthetised and the anaesthetist asked for my number and proceeded to hand me his mobile AS he injected me, despite me trying to say I had a boyfriend.

I was asleep within seconds and hope I dropped his phone on the floor.

My husband, although still boyfriend, made a massive stink about how inappropriate it was and made a formal complaint. Never heard anything back though.

I was on a mixedsurgical ward and shared with -
the old lady who I assume had something wrong with her as all she did was giggle and laugh at anything and every 5 minutes or so.
The old gentleman, and he was a total gentleman, who seemed to think it was the 1940's and he was home on leave and he kept asking the nurses to dance before he went back to his ship.
The woman who had found God and kept yelling to 'Lord Jesus' and how he needed to save her and show her the way to his arms.
and the 'lady' who was accompanied by two security guards as she was a viscious harpie who kept suggesting who she would slice 'especially the f b who had glassed her in a club. Whoever it was had done a serious job as her face was mainly dressings.
No sleep for two nights and the food was grey. The first two were lovely in their way and if I'd not been doped up and vomiting I'd probably have taken him up on his offer to dance.

The only other time was one of the nurses who refused to move me to a spare side room as my DD who was 12 hours old had been transfered to a different hospitla in a different city and they couldnt transfer me with her and left me on a ward of mums with newborns. I offered to make the bed up myself but apparently I needed to sleep, which wasnt easy, and I ended up with a different midwife sitting in the dayroom while she tried to find a consultant to transfer me.

First hospital stay experience. Put onto ward after having an emergency c section. The woman in opposite bed made it very clear she was anti English (I’m in Scotland), the woman next to her just constantly let her baby cry whilst she went off for a fag. I was exhausted and couldn’t get baby to feed (I didn’t know after a c section your milk doesn’t come in straight away). Eventually I asked a nurse if I could have some formula for him, she responded ‘we wondered when you were going to ask’ (!!) Apparently they can’t offer formula. I did however discharge myself and baby early and go on to breast feed for 9 months.

Woman's partner stayed overnight. Snored so loudly he woke not only the other mothers around him (apart from his own bloody partner), but ALL the babies too. Also kept farting LOUDLY.

Another very young couple. Couldn't understand that the ward staff were very overstretched and as couldn;t just jump to it and magic up the paper work when they demanded. "I can;t FUCKIN' BELIEVE THIS! I'm NOT waitin' around ALL FUCKIN' DAY for them to get their FUCKIN' SHIT TOGETHER!". Partner was equally awful to the midwives, both nasty and demanding and utterly ungrateful. And they had a ton of people who turned up to see the baby and were also kicking off because they couldn't undertstand you're not allowed 10 visitors in at once.

Another time, old man wanking staring at my nan. Great fun.

Our hospital infrastructure is shit.

Two spring to mind.

Ds is a bay of 4, him after a bad asthma attack and one other with first asthma attack. The mother of one of the others kept spraying deodorant (signs everywhere asking not too) which was making both asthmatics worse. She kicked off saying it was against her rights to not be able to

Others where the parents who had such a bust up in the pre op that both where kicked out and someone else (gran I think?) ended up looking after the poor child

In hospital after having my first born. The woman next to me had a constant stream of visitors. Was supposed to be only two at a time. She must have had at least 5 family members there all the time, lobg after visiting time had ended. I had the men family members poking their head through the curtain at a time when I felt very exposed and vulnerable. When they went home, late in the evening, she'd then speak loudly on her phone. She was so bloody inconsiderate and I couldn't get a proper rest. The visitors didn't whisper either, speaking at the top of their voices.

In hospital last week, kept awake by the noise the nurses made. Not work related just constant giggling and chattering. This was in room on my own with doors closed. Anyone rang their buzzer it sounded in every room, not a sensible light about the door set up. Thought I would go insane through lack of sleep.

Thank God I can access private care via insurance paid for by employer own room and little bathroom. Rest privacy and fabulous care.

I was in hospital for 2 weeks with a broken femur - there was an elderly lady in the bed opposite me who had a broken wrist. As I was considerably younger than her, several times a day she would ask me to help her..... Could you help me put my dressing gown on dear, could you pop and get my slippers for me dear - every single time the answer was no, I really can't, but it didn't stop her asking, I have no idea what she thought I was in hospital for!
I was visited by the physio several times a day and after they had gone, she would give me helpful advice like 'just put your heel down and walk properly dear" (my right femur had completely snapped so, no that wasn't happening any time soon) - the hours flew by

@Hoppinggreen I wonder if you were the reason I had to wait 4 days (and 48 hours after my waters had broken) to get a space in the delivery suite 🤔