speed re-cap #62

Part 3 

The Ward.

it’s a 1960’s college dormitory - a long carpeted corridor with about 5 rooms on each side, and a nurses station at the end. 

Each room has 2 beds, and appears slightly more hospital like... 

When reaching the nurses station you see a large lounge area, and then what seems like an identical corridor (with the same number of rooms) to the left. 

The nurse seems overworked, but nice enough, and gives me the penny-tour… “station here, shower there, lounge here, stairs there, here’s your room, did you get your lunch voucher?” - I did not. 

Since I’ll be nil by mouth at midnight, and may not be through surgery ‘till much later on in the day - I’m sent back to the front counter to collect my laminated card for a lunch.

Hospital-food from a very outdated small counter. refrigerated cold-cut sandwich and a bowl of scorching hot soup.

Back to my room to unpack and explore.

I’m in the bed closest to the window (#2), there’s a bag and jacket in the left-hand closet, so I put mine into the right one.

it’s only 2pm so I take the camera and go for a little tour to explore my surroundings.

It turns out i’m on the Ground floor, and there’s an identical room layout upstairs.

Each of the two lounges has a pool-table, several couches, and two large circular tables - there’s an alcove with a fairly large TV setup. Books and board-games are stored in some shelving to the side.

Downstairs is a commissary, along with a baby-grand piano, and a shuffle-board setup opposite the stairs.

The stairwell has cubicles for phone calls, and some pay-phones on each level (no phones in your room)

There’s a fairly large amount of green-space outside, and if the weather was warmer, I could see people heading outdoors to engage in some swift walking therapy post-surgery.

speaking of post surgery; those that have been operated on are now quietly recovering in their rooms, slowly wearing off the effects of the opioids they’ve been given, to allow the surgery to happen as a local anaesthesia.

Wandering around outside, I see yet another Ontario "Roid-squirrel!" 

…not as bulked up as the ones I remember from my time living in Toronto in 2001, but still way bigger than those we have out east.

Tour completed, I head back to my room, and while entering, I hear a large amount of painful groaning, and “sorry buddy I’m really not doing too good” from the bed closest to the door… “could you close the blinds, it’s really bright in here”

…This will become a recurring theme…

I close the curtains, swiftly collect my ipad and keyboard, and head out to the lounge area and edit some of the photos from Palm Springs.

Tomorrow; it's all about the surgery experience...