Now & Then | Even hospital beds have gone hi-tech

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

When a person is laid up in the hospital, he has time to think. Having spent Nov. 17-21 in the hospital, not only did I have time to think how the Lord has been gracious to me, that my life is spared and on the mend; but my attention was also called to the people and high-tech equipment around me. For example, in the hospital cath lab I was on a bed that seemed to ride on rails, forward and backward and sideways. At a push of a button the technicians could move me any way they wanted. Then the massive machine holding the rail bed had this great arm that moved all around to make video of my heart’s workings while the doctor was placing the little titanium coils in my arteries.

One of the things that came to fascinate me, though, was my hospital bed on third floor. After being in the cardiac intensive care unit through Thursday, I was wheeled up to the cardiac post-op area, and parked in this really nice room. I was alert and feeling better, and I was noticing even more the things going on. As I was being wheeled into my new room I had thought the bed looked bulky underneath, but I didn’t think much about it.

At that point I was especially noticing the sounds in the hospital. We used to talk about being quiet in hospitals. In my early days, young children were usually not allowed to visit in the hospital; or if they did go in they had to be really, reallyquiet. Mustn’t disturb the patients! I wonder whatever happened to that quiet idea?

Hospitals are noisy. Even the high-tech monitors are noisy. They beep when a medicine bag is empty, they beep if you move too vigorously, or you breath too slowly, or your heart misses beats. In earlier years of intravenous (IV) fluids, the flow was regulated by a little gizmo that pinched the tubing to control how fast the solution was administered. Now we have these electronic regulators that wink and flash and go beep, beep, beep.

At one point, not long after I was moved into my new room, I was lying there quietly and peacefully, listening to someone’s beeper sounding off down the hall, and to the crashes of loaded carts rattling and clanging out of the elevator. Then a whining soundstarted up, with a steadily rising pitch. I thought at first that it was coming from outside, and that someone on the parking lot was revving his fourcylinder Honda car engine to 5000 rpm and holding it wide open. Gradually the sound faded away. I had a meal, and then began checking out the push-buttons on my bed rail.

Years ago, when I first began seeing hospital beds with push-button controls, I remember thinking, “What won’t they think of next?” Hospital beds used to have cranks. A hospital orderly or a nurse would wrestle with the hand cranks to raise your head, or to arch the bed under your knees. Some of the old hospital beds had a mechanism like a car jack underneath, to raise the bed higher or to lower it. On an old-time hospital bed thesiderails had one purpose, to keep the patient in the bed.

Now, in today’s hightech hospitals, the bedrails have all these buttons with pointers. If you push the right one, it will raise your head or tilt the bed, or lower it or raise it; or even turn on the TV and change the channels. I don’t watch TV much, but I began trying buttons. I soon learned to do everything except turn up the speaker volume. Did I tell you that my bed had speakers - built-in speakers? What will they think of next?

Ever so often as I was experimenting with the bedrail buttons, I would hear in the distance that fellow high-revving his car, outside, so I supposed. At one point I turned from my right side onto my back.

After settling down comfortably, I thought I felt mybed sort of filling in under me and softening in spots.

Outside, the guy’s Honda was revving wide open again. Then I turned my head, listening. That highpitched sound seemed now to be coming from behind me, not from outside. Pretty soon I realized that my hospital bed had a motor in it. Whenever I moved, this motor would come on, rev up high, and my mattress would adjust itself. I asked the nurse about it, and she said, Yes, your bed has a pressure-point redistribution system. Law me, what will they think of next?

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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history.

He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.

Community, Pages 5 on 12/15/2010