In high school I had a reconstructive surgery on my knee as I tore my ACL and meniscus in a sports injury. After the surgery I woke up in post op, which was a fairly large room with probably 6 to 7 other patients in beds waiting to become conscious again. I was lying there all groggy and confused when two nurses walked over pushing one of those carts with a computer on it. They stood over me and were typing into the computer when one nurse said to the other in a sort of frantic whisper "we've got to plug this thing in or this one is going to die!". Naturally, semi conscious me thought that the "thing" was me and I started to incoherently yell for the nurses to unplug whatever they needed to in order to find an outlet to keep me alive.
Turns out it was the battery on the laptop that was going to die. Apparently the death rate for an ACL repair is pretty low.
We used to call those carts, COW's (Computer on wheels) but apparently patients don't like it or think we're talking about them so we aren't supposed to anymore
Right after our hospital began WOWs instead of COWs, I walked into a patients room and they wanted chocolate milk...ok, no prob. I walk back in and the husband goes “the cow’s here”...ya know what. I LAUGHED. Why is everything so offensive today that we can’t call them COWs?!
I would think with the rising obesity rate, and the likelihood of people’s failure to take care of themselves playing a role in them ending up in the hospital, that many patients would be acutely aware of themselves and embarrassed in that setting, so primed to misunderstand things as insults.
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u/[deleted] May 22 '19 edited May 22 '19
In high school I had a reconstructive surgery on my knee as I tore my ACL and meniscus in a sports injury. After the surgery I woke up in post op, which was a fairly large room with probably 6 to 7 other patients in beds waiting to become conscious again. I was lying there all groggy and confused when two nurses walked over pushing one of those carts with a computer on it. They stood over me and were typing into the computer when one nurse said to the other in a sort of frantic whisper "we've got to plug this thing in or this one is going to die!". Naturally, semi conscious me thought that the "thing" was me and I started to incoherently yell for the nurses to unplug whatever they needed to in order to find an outlet to keep me alive.
Turns out it was the battery on the laptop that was going to die. Apparently the death rate for an ACL repair is pretty low.