A Little Bit of Butter
The experience of being a patient in hospital can be quite bizarre. It is an abnormal situation, not a chosen part of anyone’s daily life and the routines and procedures often bear little relationship to the way most of us want our day to go. It is a low stimulus environment, apart from the high stimulus moments when a needle or other sharp object is jabbed in. In that environment small things assume inordinate importance.
Meals are a highlight of the day, breaking the monotony of lying in bed hour after hour waiting for the next nurse or doctor to come and make ‘obs’, observations often accompanied by the jabs to extract varying quantities of blood or insert a healing substance. Bless ‘em, they’re only doing their job of trying to save a life! I became hyper aware of even small things and had to tell myself it would be inappropriate for me to get angry when I found the butter was missing from my meal allocation twice in a row. My anger management technique was to start saying to myself mentally, ‘The king told the Queen and the Queen told the dairymaid, I do like a little bit of butter to my bread.’ That’s a misquote from A.A.Milne’s ‘Christopher Robin’. Eventually I made it an opportunity for communication by telling the meal delivery girl that I would have to request a Commission of enquiry into why there was no butter on my meal tray, twice, and recited those lines to her. I also told a really beautiful young doctor who was one of the team looking after me. They both loved it. I guess hospitals and their rigid routines can be boring for staff too and a friendly patient can help make their day. I hope so. Glad to be of assistance.