Hospital food

[ailbhe]

While I was in hospital, I had to make sure to eat no dairy products and no soya. This is because I have an intolerance to these foods which manifests as a really upset stomach, and I'd just had gastroenteritis followed by abdominal surgery. Not upsetting my innards further seemed only sensible.

I was in recovery over the official lunch period, so I first encountered a problem when I went up to the ward and they said they'd bring me something to eat because I'd missed it. I explained; they said "Did you tell anyone?"

Yes, I told everyone before I arrived in to hospital. "No, did you tell anyone up here?"

No, I just got here. It's in my notes. "You'll have to see the dietician."

Fine.

Meanwhile, they found me some cream crackers and some bourbon creams and a cup of black tea. Luckily I remembered these problems from when I was in with Linnea when she stopped breathing at 11 weeks, and from when I was in for perineal repair when Linnea was 8 months, so we had already planned for my mother to bring me food later.

The dietician arrived with the week's menus. She and I looked at them. She didn't know what was in any of the dishes. She didn't think the kitchen could produce dairy-free versions of most things, either. So, based on what I had already eaten in the hospital canteen when I was in for antenatal appointments around lunchtime, I told her which dishes did and did not make me ill.

That's right, the patient who was out of post-op recovery less than two hours told the dietician which hospital meals did and did not contain dairy.

So based on that we chose a menu. She offered to have something special and light cooked for me that evening, since I had just had surgery and most of the women would eat something light the day of surgery. She asked me for suggestions. "Pasta in a tomato-based sauce?" I couldn't see how that could be difficult.

Rob and my mother brought me fruit, biscuits, and cereal bars. And a carton of rice milk.

That night I got a miniscule portion of overcooked pasta in some kind of goo. It strongly resembled the toddler ready-meals one can buy to microwave, in fact - the ones Linnea rejected from age 16 months on, which was fine since we mainly got them for travelling when she was 15 months.

Breakfast the following morning, a nice junior midwife spent ages trying to find out what was in the cereals. They arrive on the ward decanted into unlabelled boxes, you see, and she couldn't find anyone who knew where the boxes were to read the ingredients from. She also couldn't remember the list of thigns I told her to look for - whey, casein, soya, soy flour, skim milk powder, milk, butter, yoghurt, cream, cheese, etc. She settled for bran flakes in the end, ebcause they were 100% something or other. I had my own rice milk on them. At least it was food.

Lunch was either nasty dry fish without sauce (a block of fish, some potatoes, and some kind of veg) or salty pork ghoulish. Dinner was, er, the other one of those.

Next day I still couldn't get out of bed to eat, due to a killer headache, but the nurse or midwife or whoever it was didn't believe me, so I had to wait until Rob got there to get my breakfast. He brought me muesli from home. Fab. Lunch was a baked potato so vile that Linnea refused to eat it, even though she was thrilled by the idea of eating in hospital. Dinner was more dry, nasty fish, with potatoes and veg.

Reader, I had that same fish three times. For all I know it was vat-grown and as they hacked off a lump it grew back. It was served with horrible new potatoes (really, they did something to new potatoes to make them really unpleasant) and very very boiled veg.

I ate. I know that food is necessary to recover from having holes hacked in one. I ate everything that I could choke down. The only meals I didn't eat all of were the baked potato and the final lunch, which was yet more blasted fish and since I was going home in 30 minutes I decided to skip it in favour of eating almost anything else.

Next time I shall go in to hospital with a little recipe book, or possibly a camp stove.

Still, last time I was in hospital to have a baby the food was worse.

Comments

[naath.livejournal.com]

Last time I was in hospital I had my appendix out. They decided that I couldn't have food untill I could keep down over diluted squash because making me throw up food would be bad. Well, OK, that sorta makes sense. But whilst I have no inconvinient food intolerences over diluted squash invariably makes me feel sick, furthermore being ravenously hungry makes me feel sick... but the staff were having none of it. Took me ages to make them give me food - which was also vile.

I've no idea why hospitals are so incompetant with food...

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

So what was the dietician for? How can she help anyone if she knows so little?

[Actually I suspect there's someone somewhere who does know something and produces diet sheets and labels the meals that are diabetic friendly/vegetarian[1]/for 'reducing' and the poor 'dietician' is a massively deskilled and stressed person who just parrots this information. So someone who needs more help is pretty much screwed.]

[1]Which when Alex was in hospital was mostly egg mayo sandwiches.

[heraldis.livejournal.com]

I can't eat hospital food if I'm sick, and only just when I'm well. When I was ill after R's birth, F smuggled me in sandwiches after we realised I hadn't eaten for 3 days...
He ate my hospital dinners so that they didn't start hassling me about not eating...

One reason the food is so awful is that they have a budget of about 20p per meal, or something daft.

[jentifred.livejournal.com]

For your next baby, you should come to Colorado and have the baby at the hospital where I had mine. Not only did someone from the kitchen come up and go over with me which dishes did and did not contain soy, but the food was halfway decent, AND they didn't mind in the least when Brian went down to the cafeteria to get stuff for me from the buffet. Which they didn't charge him for when he said he was taking it up for his wife.

I do, however, clearly remember being in the hospital when I was six for an asthma episode. Even after my mother went over my allergies, the first meal they brought me was a peanut butter sandwich.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's completely crazy. I'm so sorry.

When I was in the hospital with Alex, the food was great.[1] I remember eating huge quantities of it - I was so hungry. The only problem was their bizarre schedule. The day after she was born, they brought me my dinner at 4:30 in the afternoon, and then there was no other food until breakfast, 16 hours later. Fortunately, that was the day Michael had planned to bring me sushi, so I got a whole extra meal at 10pm.


[1] Or it seemed that way, anyway. The one thing I realized was objectively not very good was the boxed meal I had on the labor & delivery unit - they kept meals in the fridge that you could have as soon as you delivered, instead of waiting for the next scheduled meal or for the kitchen to send up a hot meal. I think it was a sandwich on white bread, crisps, and an orange. The sort of thing I would have been profoundly unenthusiastic about at any normal time, but it tasted delicious after all that work!

[ailbhe]

Rob loved the food when I was in with Linnea - apparently it was real comfort food in the finest British tradition. It reminded him of school dinners.

Er, yeah.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

I used to know someone who worked part time in a hospital kitchen. She said that most of the staff were (a)not terribly skilled (she was a sixth-former with no previous experience), (b)on minimum wage and (c)overworked. Whoever was in charge was working with a shoestring budget, with which he or she was supposed to supply edible, balanced meals for the whole of the (large, non-specialised including A&E and Maternity) hospital - so a practically infinite variety of medical conditions as well as all the different allergies and diets. Sometimes the diet sheets for each ward didn't get to them in time, as each meal would be planned (and budgetted) well in advance, and they didn't really have either the experienced staff or the budget to come up with good alternative food at short notice. And then, once the food had been produced, it had to be taken along miles of corridor, probably by people who were also overworked.

The food was pretty dire.

There are some obvious changes that could be made (like making the ingredients lists more widely available), but what they really needed was a logistics genius who was also a good cook, and I take it they're in rather short supply for NHS wages.

[thealmondtree.livejournal.com]

This reminds me so much of being admitted to hospital in North Wales back in the mid 80s and the reaction to my being vegetarian. The only option available was a cheese salad (at each of four meals, lunch and dinner and then lunch and dinner the next day) but they couldn't tell me whether the cheese was actually vegetarian!

[mrs-warwick.livejournal.com]

When I went for the hospital visit prior to having Rhiannon, the midwife showing us around recommended that we had someone bring food in for us. The food for the maternity wards was cooked in a different building then re-heated having been transported across site. I remember rubbery toad-in-the-hole.
When I had to stay in overnight with Rhiannon, meals were provided for her, but I had to go to the coffee shop three floors down. The menu on the children's ward was chicken nuggets and chips, sausages and chips or pasta in some very odd sauce.
There was a call a while ago from a group of doctors for someone like Jamie Oliver to take an interest in hospital food. Lloyd Grossman supposedly re-vamped menus several years ago but I think everyone has forgotton whatever it was he recommended (if indeed, what he recommended was suitable for a hospital).

[barakta]

The food my partner was offered when she had gallbladder hospitalisations was appalling. Everything was contaminated, so white fish which she might have forced down was covered in powdered cheese sauce which was disgusting. The nature of the meals was that XYZ would always come mixed into one another, so you couldn't eat X, Y or Z separately for allergy or just food preference reasons.

The last two times I was in hospital (2003 and 1995) I found the food to be pretty poor. Most food just does not handle being partly cooked and then left in electric hotplate heaters which is how those hospitals did the food. In 1995 my weight dropped from 7.5 stone to <7 stone in 5 days and that was with me eating potato pancakes and toast instead of hospital food.

I am surprised that the hospital could not provide ingredient lists for the food, as you would have been WELL within your rights to sue if they fed you something that you were intolerant or allergic to. It should NOT be the patient's responsibility to fight for accessible and edible food. Maybe a letter to that effect will stimulate them into acquiring and making ingredient lists of meals accessible.

Sadly based on my own and indeed others' experiences I would not rely on a hospital to provide enough nutritious edible food for patients. If I was to be in hospital again I would get my partner to bring food in for me, I am not fussy or intolerant to anything, but I am hard pushed to force 30-50% of available hospital food into me when I am 'well'.

[perceval.livejournal.com]

My partner and my parents made me waffles and brought me smoothies. I also had my own feeding tea, for which I only needed hot water. You can make extremely tasty and nutritious waffles both sweet and savoury.

[ms-interpret.livejournal.com]

Oh the hospital food when I had my baby 6 months ago... Good lord. I have Celiac Disease and am allergic to milk. Also, I have a severe latex allergy, and despite the fact that I can eat x-allergic foods, they would not serve them to me. The food was atrocious. The very best thing I ate there was cream of rice cereal. And I hate cream of rice cereal. There was meat that I'll swear was steamed. There was fish so bad that just taking the lid off nearly made me throw up. There were terribly overcooked vegetables, but hardly a serving. There was sometimes rice bread, but it literally would snap in half it was so dry. The meals were beyond salvaging. Finally, I just had my husband bring all my food. It was the only way to go.

[alison.hemuk.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

When I had my first in Oxford in 1996, the only meal I remember was 'cheese pie' - cheesy mashed potato with sheese on top. Great. We realised why the lifts smelt of pizza.

My brother was in Guy's/St Thomas's (i.e. centre of London, didn't even have the North Wales excuse!) for a fortnight in 1986. He was vegetarian. They offered him salad sandwiches. Which considering he was 14, had rheumatic fever and had already lost a stone, wasn't particularly helpful! Everyone who visited had to take him food :)

Hospital Food

[(Anonymous)]

Daphne writes: When I was in hospital with my first pregnancy, I was very ill after the birth of my premature baby, who subsequently died. The food was all of the "guess the vegetable" variety and I couldn't believe then (in 1984!) that Those In Charge could not see the simple correlation between good food and good recovery. It's clear things haven't changed and it's truly appalling!

Re: Hospital Food

[ailbhe]

Last time I was too ill to force myself to eat just so that I could recover. This time I was well enough to do so.

Isn't it alanis don't you think?