Is it weird to enjoy going to a hospital?

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adoylelb90815, We hope you do well and do so quickly. And enjoy the food after surgery!

I've been an in-patient twice, both times for surgery. Yes, no eating before going in. After going in, groan.

The first surgery was...um...non-trivial. I was kept at the hospital for about a week afterwards but they messed up my throat with the air hose! I could barely talk and I had trouble swallowing. For the remainder of my stay I ordered scrambled eggs for all of my meals because that was all I could handle. It took two months for my throat to completely recover.

The second surgery was less interesting. But afterwards I didn't get to enjoy their food (which I know is good!) because I was discharged a few hours after surgery.

Outpatient is the way to go!

Personally, I don't think it's strange at all.
I grew up practically living in the hospital because of my physical disability and surgeries I had to get so I find comfort in the hospital because it was the only place I felt safe and properly taken care of. Obviously my parents weren't doctors so they could only do so much, my father however was a nurse so he knew many of the doctors that would help me.

It sounds like you have a meaningful time there with the habit of doing all you gotta do, knowing they're helping, and getting the opportunity to have genuine human connection with others. I'd say that makes sense.

eeeeeyyyuuugh There were times or reasons I enjoyed being in a mental health hospital. The food for one, I had not eaten meals like that since ever, my parents couldn't cater to my autistic taste buds and just thought I was picky and fussy eater. They never heard of autism back then. My father still doesn't recognise the condition as "authentic" and has since moved on and not really in my life anymore. Anyways back to hospitals, yeah the youth mental health has it's perks, a sense of community which I have never felt even to this day (with my family) so yeah that can be a problem. But the hospital to me was a pathway out of home, that I still haven't mastered. I get too scared of the great big world and I just am not competent with he things NT's are competent and automatic with. Everything causes stress unless I have a sensory friendly environment. Mental Health ain't soo much like general hospital, main diff is orderlies, man, I haaate orderlies, if a history of being bullied isn't enough I get these gangster like stalkers to gang up on me and chemically abuse me. Note: that is not a dramatisation or exagerration. I feel being in the mental health for over a decade of meds that rebalance my neurochemistry like what, you telling me that medication, that has only doctors opinion according to the diagnostic manual is safe (when there is no sceintific test or measure for effect before administering) and "always" good for you when rebalancing your brain? you telling me that they won't UN-balance my brain by accident -in the process of re-balancing my brain?

What about weight gain? they lie time and again about that -oh this one doesn't caus eweight gain.
or
This one isn't dependant - Just don't stop it suddenly (like wtf it might as well be dependant-addictive then!)

Sorry for rant/vent

anyways I like the mental health hospital for the food and the company through hard times, the area can feel sorta safe, less factors than outside.

but

it annoys me the people who enjoy mental health hospitals because some people go back just "for fun" yet I think that other people might benefit going to hospital that really need it.

I frustrates me that outside of the hospital there is no real bridge between going and being hospitalised / admitted and intergration in society, it can become terrifying and demented some of the stuff that happens, let alone preventing hospitalisation in the first place

From my point of view? It's strange.
But that's because I largely perceive hospital stays as a very, very expensive gamble than something of a reassuring necessity and hopeful.

Even if a good chunk of my relatives and acquaintances are at least involved in the medical field, knowing and understanding patients themselves...
This includes very much all 3 of my immediate family.

So I'll just considered myself lucky to just not need constant/frequent and serious medical attention.
I wouldn't actually survive otherwise -- if not that, my family wouldn't be the same for the same financial issues and reasons -- even if they have greater than bedside manners and me as an ideal patient.


If it hadn't been that way, maybe I'd understand that getting confined in hospitals enjoyable as a novelty, not as something familiar and frequently gone to.

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@OP: Depends what country you're in and whether you're paying for it out of pocket I'd guess.

It depends on whether or not you have good insurance.

I had prostate removal surgery last year. It cost me only $300. I lucked out with having a good surgeon.

If I was facing tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills, I would probably feel differently.

I've been in hospital (for my own health problems) 4 times:

1964, appendectomy (age 11, children's hospital):
There were medical complications for a week or two but once I'd overcome those and my guts didn't ache like hell any more, I thoroughly enjoyed my stay. Before that, most of the staff thought I was just homesick and making up my pain, and were quite cruel to me, but in the end they realised my plight was genuine and they stopped being horrible. I was naive enough in those days to have complete faith in the doctors. They took me to a convalescence home where I got on well with the other kids. We had to go to their school, but it was a very gentle thing and the 2 female teachers were kind.

1969, compound fracture of tibia and fibula (age 17):
Once the operation had been done I mostly enjoyed my stay. The pain was initially quite bad, so they gave me a morphine jab and I felt great. There was a good camaraderie between the patients on the ward, self included. One guy had his face almost completely covered in plaster (probably for a broken jaw), with a little hole for his mouth, and whenever he wanted a cigarette a nurse would light it and put it in the hole for him. I remember listening to the hospital radio through headphones - one song was from John Lennon's "Live Peace In Toronto" album. What was there not to like?

1971, under observation in case of concussion after being KO'd in a fight (age 18):
Apart from a bit of nausea for a couple of days I enjoyed that stay too. Again there were people to talk to and I got on well with them. Other patients always seemed very friendly in the hospitals I was at. I guess it was because we all had the same basic situation in common. Like somebody said, the hospital seemed to be a different world where nobody rushed. It's hard to believe how much better the NHS was in those days when they were still quite well-funded. I still don't understand what went wrong in later years (the funding problems started decades before the COVID thing messed everything up).

1988, hand surgery after nearly chopping my fingers off in an accident with a Flymo - known as a weed-eater in the US - in those days the blade was made of steel (age 35):
That was just an out-patient thing and I don't recall enjoying it much. There were a few follow-up therapy sessions where they'd put my hand into a sonicator bath to help it heal. The waiting area looked pretty squalid, one patient had his blood-soaked finger in a cup of water and he looked very sorry for himself. The doctor was going very quickly from patient to patient and spending the minimum of time with each one, as if somebody had decided that time was money and that they had to maximise the use of highly-paid staff. Still, I was making a good recovery so apart from having to be in such a depressing environment, I wasn't particularly unhappy there.

I visited a maternity ward a few times in 1983 when my son was born. They pushed the visitors around rather unkindly, and the matron (or whatever she was) was an arrogant skunk. She made out that she had the authority to decide when my wife could go home, and that she was going to keep her in for a few more days. I asked the surgeon and he said she'd be fine to go home tomorrow and that he'd talk to the matron. A bit later on she turned up and said "I've been thinking, and I think I'll let you go home tomorrow." I wanted to challenge her about her dishonesty and get her to admit that the surgeon had overridden her, but my wife thought it best not to rock the boat, so I reluctantly let the matron get away with it. So I didn't enjoy that hospital experience.

I've accompanied my wife to one or two American hospitals in more recent years, and didn't like them much. Unhelpful staff were quite common - during one emergency visit I asked if I could lie down somewhere because I hadn't had any sleep on the previous night, and a member of staff retorted "If you think you've got problems, I've not had any sleep for 2 days." I didn't quite have the confidence to tell him that it explained why he was being such a jerk. Then they do this thing where during the night they'll suddenly burst into your room and turn on all the lights. And they try to discharge you dangerously early so they can get the bed back. Then there's the paperwork they always insist on before they'll do anything for you. They treat you like a beggar even when you've paid your insurance premiums and should be seen as the boss. So all in all, American hospitals haven't been enjoyable for me.

Although I haven't been hospitalized very many times, I don't mind the idea of going at all. I see it as a time to relax and let things take their course, as people take care of me and I have no control over things that I normally might worry about.
So I don't see it as weird at all.

I'll be in one again tomorrow for an appointment.
This doctor is very nice.
It's just the parking, the waiting, and the sensory that drives me mad.
Waiting rooms are my version of personal hell.

We had to do all the appointments online for two years for Covid.
It will be strange going in person again.