My experience of hospital food has never been as atrocious as most people make it out to be. I'm not opposed to a free two course meal served to me AND not having to clean up afterwards! I mean it's not a la carte but you get what you pay for don't you 🤪
Where I used to live in North Devon everyday we would get a menu card to fill out to pre-order our food for the next day (christ I sound like a semi permanent resident! I do have two heart conditions, fear not, I'm not a hypochondriac that just goes to hospital for a retreat and free food! 😲) but trust me this menu card landing on your table everyday is THE highlight of your day! I've just very recently been to visit my Nan in hospital back in North Devon as well and had a peek at her menu card and the choice has really broadened!
So, my recent stay in a welsh hospital, you don't get these menu cards, the HCA's come round and ask you what you want... My favourite kind of HCA comes round and gives you what options you have for your meal for you to choose. What cracks me up is the ones that come round 'What do you want for dinner?' Hmm I don't know Jackie... McDonalds? KFC? What's on offer today, because I left my fucking crystal ball at home before I was admitted!
But for today's blog I wanted to share how a HCA communicated my options for dinner with me because it was just... funny... I don't think there is any other way to describe this conversation other than hilarious!
So, the HCA comes to the foot of my bed holding his pen and piece of paper, looks at me and says.... 'You like soup?!' I sort of gave a side glance to my husband, looked back at the HCA, then gave a side glance to the patient to the right of me before making eye contact with the HCA and politely asking what flavour the soup was! His response... 'I don't know, it's orange...butternut squash maybe? I politely declined. My next option... 'You like pasta?!' 'What kind of pasta??' And he genuinely rolled his eyes at me, huffed and said with utter inconvenience 'tomato pasta'. I mean I would normally be fuming by this point but it was so comical, (maybe because he genuinely also looked like Romesh Ranganathan's double!) that I just inwardly chuckled and asked if I had any other options to which his answer was 'Ham' ................. 'just ham?' another eye roll and a frustrated response of 'ham salad!'
At this point I resigned myself to having the tomato pasta, I mean he really sold it to me, I thought I might lose sleep that night if I didn't try it!
For pudding I was offered chocolate cake and nothing else, I didn't argue. So off he goes once he gathered all his dinner requests.
Due to how symptomatic I was when I was standing they had been having me use a commode by the bed. Of all times nature was calling now and fucked if I was going to go to the toilet on a commode in a room full of all the other patients AND their visitors WHILE they were dishing up dinner! (I don't have much dignity left after my numerous hospital stays but I drew the line there!) So they kindly came and wheeled me the the toilet and as I went past the food trolley, it wasn't even ham salad it was beef salad! upon return to my dinner it wasn't chocolate cake it was in fact strawberry sponge! 🤨
This is probably one of those stories that was probably far more hilarious in the moment because what a blog cannot do is replicate the tones and facial expressions but it was just too funny not too share!
Just know that this was one of those situations, I'm sure you've all experienced at least once, where the whole situation was just to funny to of been angry or complained!
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