Last week I ended up in the Chest Pain Unit of a local hospital, which in and of itself was bad enough. Things got worse when I was told I would be admitted to the hospital and kept overnight for observation.

Translation: “We are going to keep you here for awhile, torture you in ways you never dreamed possible, and make sure you don’t sleep a wink.”

Things started going down hill late Monday night. Nurses had already been in and out of the room with the regularity of a 25-year-old chugging Metamucil. They came in to take blood, they came in to take vital signs, they came in to check my IV, and they came in to give medications. I think a few times, they came in just to make sure I was still there.

This steady flow of traffic increased as the hour grew later and was made worse by the fact that I had a roommate, who we’ll call Mr. Hart (pun intended).

Mr. Hart was a nice old gentleman who had been admitted earlier in the day with a rapid heartbeat and what he said was “acid indigestion.” The nurses and lab workers took turns coming into the room to harass Mr. Hart and myself and this went on all night long.

I started counting the number of visits and, by my count, the staff visited our room 21 times between 1 AM and 5 AM.

You do the math.

After checking my vital signs at 1 AM, drawing blood at 1:15 and giving me medication at 1:30, a nurse came in at 2 AM and told me to pull up my gown.

Unsure as to whether I was about to get an enema or star in an adult movie, I did the only logical thing a man could do under the circumstances. I asked a question.

“What for?” I queried.

“I’m going to give you a shot of blood thinner,” came the reply.

“Why do you need me to pull up my gown,” I reasonably asked. “Can’t you just give it to me in my arm or put it in the IV?”

“No, I have to give it to you in the stomach,” she said.

“I don’t have rabies, I have a heart problem.”

Unwrapping two syringes, she continued undaunted.

“I have to give them to you in the stomach, because that’s the only place that has enough tissue,” she said. “I don’t think it will hurt much but it might burn a little bit.”

That, my friends, was an understatement.

Imagine an Atomic Fireball dissolving right under the skin of your upper abdomen and you might get a vague idea of what this was like.

Things were even worse for Mr. Hart.

My roomie was sound asleep at around 1:30 AM when a nurse came in, woke him up, and gave him a sleeping pill.

“I don’t need a sleeping pill,” protested Mr. Hart.

“Your doctor ordered it,” said the nurse.

“But I was sound asleep,” reasoned Mr. Hart. “I really don’t need it.”

“Your doctor ordered it,” repeated the nurse, as if that somehow carried the weight of Moses coming down the mountain with stone tablets under each arm.

Mr. Hart took the pill and went back to sleep. Fifteen minutes later a different nurse came in and woke my roommate up.

“What do you want this time?” asked Mr. Hart.

“I need to give you some medicine,” said the nurse. “It’s a laxative.”

“I don’t think I need a laxative,” countered Mr. Hart. “I have acid indigestion.”

“Your doctor ordered it,” said the nurse, an obvious clone of the one who had been in earlier.

Mr. Hart took the laxative and that’s when the real trouble began.

About 4 AM he woke up and sat straight up in the bed. Prior to this, he had been snoring loudly, making sounds not unlike a Harley rumbling at low RPM. Now, he was fumbling with his covers, trying to find the nurse call button. He summoned the nurse and told her he needed to go to the bathroom. She told him, due to the fact that he had taken a sleeping pill, she couldn’t risk letting him get up.

“You might fall,” said the nurse. “I can’t risk that.”

“Let me get this straight,” said Mr. Hart. “You gave me a laxative that I didn’t need and now I have to go to the bathroom. You won’t let me go because you woke me up and gave me a sleeping pill I didn’t need.”

“I wouldn’t put it that way,” said the nurse.

“How would you put it?” asked Mr. Hart.

If you think things could not get any worse, you are wrong. Before the conversation could continue, Mr. Hart’s bowels made a sound kind of like tearing plywood off a wall. He then soiled the bed mightily.

Had my mother been there, she would have said that something crawled up inside Mr. Hart and died. In this case, something seemed to have crawled up inside him, died and melted. The smell was horrendous and I, being hooked to monitors and an IV, could not escape.

Needless to say any lingering dreams of rest or sleep were punctured when Mr. Hart let fly. I held on as best I could until my doctor finally arrived in the early afternoon. After discussing my tests with me, he told me I could go home. I got dressed fast and went to the nurses’ station before he had a chance to change his mind.

“I’m leaving right now,” I told them. “My doctor ordered it.”