Electronic Medicine

How times have changed the way hospitals are run these days compared to way they were when I went to the hospital to have my children in 1946 and 1952. I was in St Luke’s hospital here in Houston a few days ago for a stress test and discovered an electronic world.

St Luke’s is the hospital that had the lower floors flooded when Allison stalled over the city and poured rain for 8 days. As I was wheeled thru the building, I was astonished at the renovation. The building looked brand new. I had seen the TV pictures of the flood damage and read about the destruction Allison caused but currently there isn’t a hint of such flood having taken place.

Humans carry, push, and roll the electronic gadgets and monitors from place to place and from room to room. As for the cameras and other electronic machines that have to remain stationary, patients are pushed, carried and rolled to them.

When vital statistics are required, patients are connected to the various electronic machines by cords which are attached to the body by adhesive snaps and suction cups and the data is determined electronically.

I had wheel chair rides to and from various departments and some of my ‘pushers’ were race drivers. What fun speeding down long, long empty corridors and turning corners to race in another direction. My room was on the 9th floor but the elevators only served a few floors. We had to go long distances to the opposite side of the hospital to get another elevator which would take us to the floor for my tests.

Years ago one always knew doctors and nurses by what they wore. Doctors wore white coats and nurses wore uniforms and caps that had a code of colored stripes to distinguish RNs from Practical nurses. Now everyone dresses alike. I couldn’t tell who was a doctor and who was a technician. I was never certain if a doctor was describing a procedure or a technician was. Male nurses seemed to outnumber female nurses and I lost my modesty in a hurry when I had to get ‘hooked’ and ‘unhooked’ to another monitor or camera.

It’s really a marvelous thing to have a camera take photos of one’s heart from different angles while all one has to do is lay still and breathe normally for 21 minutes. Then I walked the treadmill to get my heart rate up high enough to please the technician. Since I had noticed an audience of about a dozen people watching me walk the treadmill, I naturally had to do my best walking. No way was I going to fail that test!!! Then it was back to the camera and normal breathing again for another 21 minutes.

I’m happy to say my stress test indicated all was well and when it came time to be discharged I was given pages and pages of printout describing everything in detail. All the pokes and prods and the time of each had been recorded, analysed and preserved for posterity

Now that I'm home, I am re-attached to all my own gadgets: My Laptop, the Internet, the International Chess Server, my Voice Activated Cell Phone and I've trained my Digital Camera on Miss Mimi, who doesn't seem to mind the attention at all.