I hate Grand River Hospital.
I hate the fact that everything of use seems to reside in the catacomb-style confines of its basement: a hell of half-renovated formica & drywall, and hideous blue tiles that scream clinical 1950s oppression.
I hate its herding-pen mentality, as everyone is dragged from one overcrowded communal waiting area to another, suffering until their turn to be scanned by overworked machines and even more overworked technicians.
I hate the Cancer Centre…because after months of visits, I’m sick of the gorgeous wood paneling, the miles of clear class, the smooth and silky marble & concrete, and all of its attempts to feel calm and welcoming. It’s a sham – designed to hide exam rooms that feel as tiny and oppressive as any other exam rooms, a chemo-clinic packed full of (disturbingly) more and more people with each passing day, and the giant radiation area…filled to its high, echoing rafters with an unearthly, sepulchral silence…interrupted only by the occasional soft buzz of a radiation scanner, depositing mini-Hiroshimas into the diseased tumors of tired, frail, and frightened men and women.
I hate St. Mary’s Hospital.
I hate its hideous, over-priced parking lot. I hate it’s endlessly-temporary-yet-permanent-we-can’t-decide main entrance, and its constantly broken revolving E/R door.
I hate that this hospital never seems finished…that renovations seem to have been continuing since the time of Noah’s Flood…with the crack of doom as a completion date! It’s some ridiculous exercise in endurance, where pockets of newness are crammed into wedges of architecture so ancient and frail that the smell of past eras (and, possibly, urine) is overpowering and nauseating.
I hate its E/R department: too small, and obviously designed by mentally-deficient chimpanzees. I’ve taught in classrooms larger and more welcoming than the semi-circular morass they call a waiting area. Torquemada would have approved…
I hate that this institution of healing DOESN’T do casts or crutches…because hospitals shouldn’t have to be one-stop-medical-necessity shops. They should be stratified, single-service, bottom of the barrel gulags…where certain things simply aren’t done, especially if the neighbouring hospital can accommodate such services in their basement!
And who’s idea was it to place the public televisions at angles few people can enjoy…aside from the physicians and nurses, who should have better things to do than watch The View or Celebrity Dancing! Let’s hate them as well…
I hate that I know both of these hospitals so well — old acquaintances that have become irritating, nagging pests that must be tolerated. I hate that I’ve had to visit them over and over and over again for the last five months…and that many more months…if not years…of visits lie ahead of me. I hate that they are necessary and convenient…because if I and my family weren’t such victims of karmic retribution, they wouldn’t…and shouldn’t…be necessary.
I’ve temporarily run out of things to hate. Hopefully, that means I’ll sleep now…dead and dreamlessly.
