How to Keep Yourself Sane While Staying at the Hospital
Picture this. It’s a sunny day. You’re driving to school when suddenly you get into a car crash. Your body is burned and you’ve lost several body parts. Your head hurts and nothing is making sense. You may even start to think you’re mental. What’s worse is that you’re stuck in the hospital for several months before you’re allowed to leave. The three steps involved in keeping yourself sane while staying in a hospital are to be visited by friends, talking to other patients, and entertaining yourself.
The first step to keeping your sanity during your long stay at the hospital is to be visited by friends. One way to ensure visits from your friends is to tell them to visit you because you are in the hospital. This will help you feel less lonely and more connected. It will also mean that you can keep in touch with people who matter to you and still know what is going on in your social group. It also shows who really cares about you. For example, in the novel The Gargoyle, the protagonist (no name) is in a burn ward. When he woke up he discovered something interesting: “I was told that my friends, who had laughed at my jokes when I was sharing drugs at the side of my pool, came to visit while I was in a come-but each looked at me for less than a minute before walking out, never to return” (34-35). This also shows who really cares about you. All of his “friends” are not real friends otherwise they would have stayed. A real friend would care about what`s inside you not how you look. In the novel, the protagonist is visited by his friend and partner in pornography. “Candee Kisses” (stripper name) visits him and tries to cheer him up; she brings presents, supports him, and tries to make him realize how lucky he was to still be alive. Marianne also comes in and tells him stories of how they knew each other in the past. The mystery behind Marianne’s personality definitely kept him on his toes. This doesn’t mean that it’s necessary to have someone tell you stories about how they knew you in the past; however it is very a good strategy to keep someone entertained. If you have good friends who will visit you will be able to keep your sanity
The second step to remaining sane while staying at the hospital is to talk to other patients who are going through the same thing. The patients will usually be able to help you feel more comfortable during your stay because they can empathize with you. For example, in the novel, The Gargoyle, seven year old Therese walks to the bed of the narrator. She has blond hair and sapphire coloured eyes. Her outsides weren’t burned, however, her insides were. She had an allergic reaction causing something similar to a fire, in her lungs. On the other hand, the narrator got in a car crash. This doesn’t happen to the narrator. He is a former porn star who was driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs. Hallucinating that a volley of arrows is being shot at him from a forest, he swerves off the road and into a ravine. There his car sets alight, and he begins to burn. Just as he thinks he will die, the car tips into a creek and he survives, though badly burned. His flesh was charred and within his first twenty-fours in the hospital six gallons of isotonic liquid was pumped into him. He was sheeted with cadaver skin. She still took the time to walk to his bed and say, “You’re just like me” (36).