So yeah… I am one of those types. I have an EXTREME phobia of hospitals. I can’t stand them, they scare the shit out of me. I have never had any broken bones, never had any form of surgery, and I rarely get sick. I don’t really walk on egg shells or anything to prevent these things from happening, I guess I have just been lucky so far.

Doctors, hospitals, sickness and death scare the totally scare the shit out of me. I don’t know why either. It’s strange. My wife, she is a trooper and has no fear of any of these things. However, she is deathly afraid of bugs. Seriously, she has an equal phobia of bugs as I do hospitals. Like seriously, if a bug flew on her, she will lose control and possibly even cause harm to herself towards trying to get the bug off her.

For me, I have only been a spectator at the hospital. I have cared for two very beloved family members during their terminal illnesses. Uncomfortably, I even lived in a hospital for over a month and did my home based business from a hospital chair with my laptop in the late hours of the night as I stayed with my grandmother because no one else in my family had time to be there for her.

I remember one night, sitting with my grandmother as she was dying of cancer, with all these freaky ass machines connected to her with wires, tubes and fluids, we had a really bad thunderstorm, and eventually the hospital lost its power. It was around 3:00 A.M. and our room was at the very end of a long dark corridor. Splitting the corridor between the central wing were electromagnetic double doors that instantly shut and sealed off the section of the corridor that my grandmother and I were in. Freaking instant anxiety kicked in. Correction, verge of panic attack started to creep into my bones. I wanted to leave. But there was no way I could leave my grandmother alone in the room by herself. So, I was indeed stuck, and all the dead spirits and freaky things were coming to get me.

You have to understand that I am very caring for the sick, especially if it is a friend of a family member. Plus I knew too, all my life growing up that my grandmother didn’t like thunderstorms very much and they made her uncomfortable. Knowing that, even more so, there was no way I could leave the room. Panic started to really kick in though…  my eyes started to adjust to the dark, and I got the nerve to get up out of my chair and open the room door to look down the corridor.

It was all dark with the faint illumination of the emergency lights that seemed to purposely shine on all those freaky ass machines on wheels that stay accessible in the hallways. The hallway was much more freaky than the room, I decided to shut the door and just wait it out. Unfortunately though, all the machines that were connected to my grandmother were freaking out because they had no power to them. They were beeping and making all kinds of weird ticking noises.

After about 3 minutes, but what seemed like an eternity, the power to the hospital turned back on and things were back to a normal level of being uncomfortable. Needless to say, that experience really didn’t help me much with my phobia of hospitals. Needless to say, my anger against my family continued to grow, especially directed towards my uncles — my grandmother’s natural born children — for being too busy with their own businesses and not being there to care for their mother.

Eventually she died and despite the uncomfortable situation of both of us living in a hospital for over a month, indeed we had the time of our lives. I learned more in that month sitting with my grandmother than I had in the last ten years. My grandmother came from an era where black people and white people had separate water fountains for drinking and separate seating on public buses. She came from an era where women had absolutely ZERO rights and men ruled the world.

She never believed in any of that crap and was kind to anyone she had the opportunity to meet and in fact was very successful in business. She was a manager at a bowling alley and eventually a manager at Montgomery Wards and she didn’t take shit from no body, especially a man. As I sat with her for that month and a half, I soon discover that she indeed was a — well… no longer walking — but breathing history book, packed full of information. I knew all too well that soon, that information, that history and those 87 years worth of memories were going to be permanently deleted and erased forever just like a reformatted 7200 RPM IDE Hard Drive. What a waste… it puzzled me why many people in my family didn’t place such an elite value in her 87 years of history and memories. If only I had a way to stick a flash drive in her ear to download that information, that would have been awesome. It also puzzled me why no one wanted to simply be there for her and hold her hand. At any rate, you couldn’t have paid me money to miss it, despite my extreme fear of hospitals.

One of the things that I don’t like about doctors — and I was very quick to pick up on this when my dad had terminal cancer – is the fact that when a human being is diagnosed with a terminal illness, many of the doctors pretty much write you off as already being dead. I learned very quickly that doctors don’t look at humans and life the way I look at other humans and their lives. Doctors know information that you don’t. Doctors have opinions and internal thoughts that they don’t share with you. “Yeah, that guy is screwed… I’ll give him two weeks to live.” says the doctor to himself. “Hi Mr. Conn, looks like you are going to have a little battle up the road ahead… we can fight this, but you’ve got to stay strong.” says the doctor out loud with a superficial smile.

The smell of a hospital freaks me out. The clothes they wear freak me out. All the machines and gadgets and the noises that they make freak me out.  The whole process in which a patient is subjected to freaks me out. Being admitted into the hospital, you no longer have control. Heck you can’t even get a full night of sleep because every four hours you are awakened by a nurse poking a probing you with various tools, needles and gadgets as a big spot light is illuminating over your bed.

The day will come when I will be the one in that nasty bed of death and sickness, and I only hope that there will be someone there with me. That is one of the primary reasons why I care so much about other people and their sicknesses. For now,  I can only imagine and truly fear what it would be like if I was the one in that nasty bed of death and sickness and for that reason is why I am very supportive and sympathetic towards those who suffer and are in pain or have terminal illnesses. Dying alone in a dark and scary hospital room is no way to go down and to the few people that one day may stumble upon this post, I will never forgive you and you know who you are.

P.S. LOL… I don’t expect anyone to hit the comment form with a ten foot pole on this one, it’s ok, don’t worry about it. I wouldn’t comment either. LOL!!! Hit me up on a comment on my next post.