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

[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.