Well, we have the guide to surviving law enforcement encounters, but statistically a doctor is waaaay more likely to put you in the ground than an LEO.
I would be interested to hear what folks think is essential to making it out of the hospital in a manner other than feet first. I don't have much experience, I did 10 days in the hospital as a 5 year old and have survived military medicine for 12 years now. The recent eye-opener for me was breaking my leg which put me in the health care mill and under the knife.
I broke my fibula a few inches up from the ankle and had to get it screwed back together. Pretty minor, but the things I saw from other patients! First, from me. I was given all my medications by the interns in training when they checked me out of the hospital. The meds included a big cool box for my Lovenox blood thinner which I was to self inject for two weeks. Silly me, I figured that big shiny box equaled medicine inside, but no, they had the gall to call me the next day and tell me I had forgotten to pick up this medicine when I left. Them who wheeled me past the pharmacy when they had already given me all my other medications. No problem, except I was already 5 hours from a military hospital and heading still farther away. I saw another fellow in great pain repeatedly run out of morphine in his self-administer pump and then the nurses take 40 minutes to find a doctor to re-prescribe another dose. I saw one fellow complain that the Percocet the ER had given him had sent him on a new civilian ER trip for seizure and double digit blood pressure, barely raised an eyebrow with his military doc. Mostly, I saw a high caseload and patients or their advocates being way too passive. So, my rules.
-Stay out of the damn hospital! Stay healthy.
-Question everything, especially medication.
-Toughen up, I know pain is different for everyone, but the less time you keep yourself comatose on pain meds, the better. I took a total of 6 Percocets and about 7ml of the morphine pump right after surgery. If I had to do it again, I'd opt for none, the lack of awareness and lingering effects on your entire body suck. Plus, narcotics make me mean until I fall asleep.
-Have someone with you if you are going lights out, and have your personal life straight. I didn't have one with me, figured I would wake up.
-Take charge of your own care and recovery. My view is docs, like LEOs, want to be in charge. Hence the advice to take pain medication before you are in pain, stay doped up, do not move! Heck with that, in my case I never went back for the blood thinner, I figured the best way to prevent blood clots was to get out of bed and stay active. I was supposed to go on vacation before this, so I went, 3 days after surgery I was hiking on crutches, got it up to about 3 miles a day and made it 2/3 the way up Mt. Pisgah in N. Carolina. Great upper body work-out. The point is, I didn't lie in bed, feel sorry for myself and eat some more pills. I got very antagonistic in my head, I could see the doctors wanted to treat everyone the same and it didn't work for me, so I adopted a screw the docs outlook.
-Touch nothing, wash often. Hospitals are germ havens. That said, the only medication that I ever eat right on schedule are any antibiotics I am prescribed.
-Mark the affected part. The surgical team had a good protocol, every one of them asked what was getting cut on and then initialed the effective part in Sharpie.
