The Routine of the Ward. IMH.

The Routine of the Ward. IMH.
1/8/2012 Wednesday 11:41am

Before I write about fixing pipes and shower water pressure, I want to share about this hospital’s routine and schedule here like an in-house jail. I want to commend on this patient-friend of mine – YSC that she sharply and frustratedly pointed out about the routine and schedule of this ward 34A or all of IMH’s ward in general.
We wake up, as early as 7am to bathe. And Everybody has to wake up. Because if you miss Bathing, you won’t get to bathe until the next day. The next morning. I dunno what kind of reason they shifted the bathing time from the afternoon to the morning. Because the noon time is the time where the sun is hottest and our body odour is the strongest. Their reason of ‘bathing to look fresh in front of the doctor’ is rather not accepted by me.
That is the reason they give, to let us bathe in the morning, when we just woke up, we have to feel the pounding hot and cold water on our backs instead of relaxing our mornings with a cuppa sweet coffee – yes, their coffee can sometimes be so bitter. What I’m trying to say is, I don’t want to wake up so so early in the morning and then Work. Work means rubbing ourselves in soap, wash this, that and wash up. We just want to wake up as and when WE LIKE, but we just have to eat medicines.
So basically, hear this out. This is our daily routine: So we basically have to wake up as early as 7am in the morning, bathe, and then move out/walk out from our sleeping area into a pantry-dayspace. Then we eat our breakfast. They always serve us kaya/butter bread and coffee with some exception, milo. It’s always bread and coffee every morning, that’s all. If we’re lucky, the doctor will see you in the morning. If you’re not lucky, for 5 hours, from 8.30am to 12pm, you Do Nothing for the whole 5 hours. Either you sit down there and watch some non-beneficial TV show or you sit down there and stare at the wall. This is what us IMH patients go through everyday! Extreme boredom! And so you say schizophrenic patients with invading thoughts and are hearing extra-terrestrial voices have to stay in this place for days with this kind of nothing-to-do environment, our thoughts will go even more haphazard and with this quietness and emptiness, extraterrestrial voices can strike even greater. If you say we’ve got mental illness, and we came here to be cured, I think we came here to get mental retardation and deterioration of mental alertness instead!
So comes 12pm, then we get our lunch. Our lunch is always almost the same old food. It’s not like the publicised Khoo Teck Puat hospital’s food. We are deprived of lobster, seafood, western food, currypuffs and KFCs. At least you would give us western food here. I understand this is C-Class ward, but C stands for Commodation, with an A in front. What I mean is, even though whatever class it is, food is of the utmost importance to us! Especially the kind of food. Good tasting food can lift our spirits while we are in the hospital or anywhere. I mean, we never got a mee rebus here at all! The food they provide, especially Chinese food, is not tasty at all. So you see. Maybe they should change the cook for IMH’s Chinese dishes.
After we eat our lunch, we will then move back again into our sleeping area, where we will again into our sleeping area, where we will again Do nothing on our beds from 12:30pm to 3:30pm for Three hours. Usually we sleep, to get over, to numb ourselves the pain of staring at the walls with nothing to do. Those lucky selected ones by the doctor will then go to OT – Occupational Therapy at 2:30pm. My way of getting out of the boredom rut. So comes 3:30pm, we get an awakening from our beds joltedly to move out back again to the dayspace-pantry. Usually, after a deep sleep, we dread to get out of bed. But nevertheless, we are forced to go to the pantry to eat our tea. One thing I wanna highlight is the terrible kind of biscuits they give us. It’s always the cheapo salted square biscuits from Khong Guan. I ‘d like to feedback, shall we have Chicken In A Biskit biscuits and some better tasting biscuits then lemon putts, lemon puffs and more lemon puffs or squarish salted biscuits, squarish salted biscuits and more squarish salted biscuits? I’m sure when you’re outside you don’t always eat these kind of biscuits, although I must admit they do give us green bean soup sometimes, but nevertheless..
After finishing our tea, we would then sit there and do nothing again until our dinner time at 5:30pm. When I wanna do something, like asking the Sister Nurse Manager Ho Soo Kim to lend me a boredom-ridder radio, she instead of trying to get me one radio, tells me that she threw away the radio. So we sit there and do nothing again until dinner comes. Dinner is always still the same like lunch, rice, rice and more rice. Either that or noodles in special days – days which I superbly look forward to.
So we gobble up our dinner and we are whisked away again, we have to move back into our sleeping area dormitory again. And when we do this, sometimes some of us would sit and join the visitors in the visitor’s area, as we walk pass it. Because we get lousy food in the hospital we always ask the visitors for their chips, oranges, Ruffles, cheese and chicken rice. And when we do that, we run the risk of getting ourselves tied. So that’s the extent we go to satisfy our tastebuds!
So we are ushered back into the dormitory again. And inside the dormitory, we’d do nothing again until 7pm, a 1 hour wait till they serve us our medicine. Some of us just don’t want to eat the medicine even though we do admit we’ve got mental illness. And after medicine, we lie on our beds waiting for our night time milo and then after that our lotions and lastly brushing teeth. Then, we are expected to sleep. If we ever walk around again and again, they would tie us on the bed. That’s how cruel these systems are in IMH.
And so we sleep. And the cycle continues again the next day.
So let me sum it up for you: We wake up, 7am, bathe, out, eat breakfast, doing nothing, lunch, do nothing, tea, do nothing, dinner, do nothing, medicine. Then milo, lotions and brush teeth. Then the same day repeats itself like a stray dog chasing you in a ringed-circle.
If I’m not crazy, I would turn crazy in this place. That’s why I say this is like living in a jail! What kind of hospital is this? And not to forget, while we are doing nothing, those chronic patients will SCREAM and shout all day, disrupting our mood and emotions. IMH, a place of recovery? I think it’s a place of torture. Before I forget, there’s no laptops or phones or even mp3s allowed in the ward. Loving hearts, beautiful minds? I think it’s black hearts and disturbed minds. Said. Done.
1/8/2012 Wednesday 10:44pm
- Genevieve