Hospitals need patients

Hospitals are becoming more efficient these days. Patients don't have to wait long at all because the hospital has a surplus of beds. In order to stay in business, hospitals have to do their best to avoid empty beds. This is both a good thing and, it seems, a bad thing.

A few days ago, I went to the hospital to visit a friend in hospital, I first went to the information desk, there also handle admission procedures. I was about to ask my friend for his room number when MY throat tickled and I coughed softly. When the lady on duty heard this, she immediately took out a form, wrote down my name, age and occupation, and pressed the bell. I was about to explain that I was only visiting friends when two carers arrived with a wheelchair. They pushed me into my wheelchair and pushed me down the corridor.

'I'm not sick! 'I cried.' I've come to see a friend. '

One of the nurses said, "We'll take your friend to your room as soon as he comes."

"Here he comes."

"Well, when we put you in bed, he can come and see you!"

I found myself being shown to a small room with a sign on the door saying "Private ward, not admitted without nurse's permission". The orderly stripped me naked, handed me an odd nightgown with a strappy back and a water jug, turned on the TELEVISION suspended from the ceiling, and said, "Press the bell if you need anything."

'I want my clothes!

"Oh, you can count on that." "Said the nurse." Even if the worst were to happen, we'd leave all your things with your possibly widowed wife."

Just as I was trying to figure out how to get out of the window, a doctor came in with some of his students.

"Are you in severe pain?" the doctor asked.

'I don't feel any pain!

The doctor looked worried. "If you don't feel pain, it means it's more serious than we thought. Where did it hurt at first?"

'It doesn't hurt anywhere!

The doctor nodded sympathetically and turned to his students. "This is one of the most difficult kinds of patients," he said, "because he refuses to admit that he is ill. He will not recover until he has overcome the illusion that he is not ill at all. Since he won't tell us what is wrong, we'll have to do a surgical examination to find it out."

I shouted, "I don't want an operation!"

The doctor shook his head. "Nobody wants to operate, but it's better to do something sooner rather than later."

"I'm not sick, I'm all right!"

The doctor filled out the chart and said, "If you were all right, you wouldn't be here."

The next morning, they shaved my chest and refused to give me breakfast. Two orderlies arrived and moved me to a stretcher cart, accompanied by the head nurse and followed by a priest.

I looked around for help, but I was disappointed.

Finally, I was wheeled into the operating room. "Wait a minute." I began. "I have something to tell you. I'm really sick, but I don't have health insurance and I can't afford anesthesia."

The anesthesiologist turned off the anesthesia machine.

"Of course, I don't have the money to pay for surgery." So the doctors put down their surgical knives.

Then I turned to the nurse and said, "I don't even have the money to pay my hospital bills."

Before I knew it, I had changed into my own clothes and been herded out into the cold street by the same two nurses who had put me in the first place. I went to the information desk to inquire about my friend's ward. The officer on duty stared at me and said coldly, "We don't want to see you in this hospital any more. You are abnormal."