Sparks Ignites

I haven’t been a hospital patient since I was in grade school. I remember the nurses dressed in white uniforms with pillbox hats looking like Jackie Kennedy’s bridesmaids. They were visions of purity, supplying drugs and sponge baths. Immaculate angels in white— the appropriate color to wear when blood and body fluids are only a squirt away.   IV Bottles, syringes and thermometers were made of glass. When the Good Humor person of medicine came bearing a cylinder filled with toxic mercury, you had to make sure you didn’t bite down. Also, pray they didn’t tell you to roll on your side. “No sneaking in the back door. That’s a no glass insertion zone, Nurse Ratched!”   Surgical procedures, medical technology and patient care has progressed far from what I remembered as a six-year-old. Hospital stays are as brief as possible. They throw you out of bed hours after surgery. When I had my appendix taking out, I was in-patient until my stitches could be removed. I was there so long I h...