A Little Dignity Goes A Long Way

Kelly and I did not take many pictures during the 18 days that we were in the hospital and inpatient rehab. Number one, we were not in a picture taking mood and number two, there was not much we wanted to remember enough to take a picture. 

In hindsight, we should have taken pictures of all the great nurses and doctors who helped us along the way. We have taken some pictures of the therapist since then and we will post them at some point in the future. 

I do have three pictures taken the day that we were discharged and happily made our way to Odie‘s home. It was my first time going to the Lazy OD Ranch since the stroke, of course.

Ready To Leave Our Room

I asked Kelly to please bring some dress clothes, dress shoes and a tie for me to wear home. She wondered why I wanted to dress up to go home and you may be wondering the same thing. It is a reasonable question. 

This was my thinking and it certainly made sense to me. I wanted to leave that place with a little dignity. There was not much dignity to be found at a hospital. There is little privacy and not much room for modesty either. 

We tried to preserve any decency and self-respect that we could, but it often proved difficult. I had no intention of wearing a hospital gown for my time there and I politely declined each time it was offered or even insisted upon. 

Plus, Kelly Jo shut the door for me when they needed to work on me and tried to retain any modesty that we could. 

We understand that doctors and nurses do the absolute best they can and we have the fullest respect for them. Human bodies become routine when you work on them every day, but my body is not routine, it is mine. 

We received nothing but kindness and thoughtfulness once we made our wishes known and I appreciate the respect that we received. However, hospitals are not designed to preserve our dignity. so we must work for it for ourselves. 😇

I wanted to go home looking and feeling a whole lot better than when I arrived 18 days before. Even though I could not button my dress shirt over the feeding tube, I wanted to put my suit and tie on while going home to try to reclaim at least a speck or two of dignity.

I have no idea what others thought about it and it’s not really that important to me. At least I felt normal, or as close to normal as I had felt for nearly three weeks. 

It seemed almost normal to feel normal  That helped a lot.

Does that make sense? I tell you often, it makes sense when I say it to myself.

Thank you for reading today.

Davy