Weird experience

[Crankin]

OK, maybe I am just being silly, but this made me lose faith in the physical and mental ability of humans around here.
I went to get a hip x ray, so I can get PT. First, I go into the changing room, where I had to put on the blue scrubs, because my pants had a zipper. Now, I know they make one size fit all, but I could not believe the size of these things. I had to wrap the tie one and a half times around my body to get them to stay up. No joke, both DH and I could have fit in there, and maybe one of my grown sons. Then, I noticed about half the chairs were supersized; i.e., they were really the size of a love seat, but I know they were for one person.
OK, on to the actual x ray. I was greeted by, "Wow, why are you here?" by the tech, after he verified my identity... He asked if I had had a trauma to my hip. I said no, that I was a cyclist and x country skier and that it has been bothering me more and more during activity for about a year. So, then when he asked me to put my toes together for the x ray (like a snowplow in skiing) he was amazed that 1) I understood the directions and 2) that I could do it. He was even surprised I could verify which hip hurt me, saying that most people can't.
I don't want to sound "virtuous" compared to others, but the two things together (the abundance of huge people and the lack of people's ability to understand directions), were quite distressing to me. I live in a community where 70-80 percent of the people have college and/or graduate degrees and there seem to be an awful lot of active people around here. Maybe they go into Boston for a routine x-ray, so the local hospital never sees them?
It was just depressing.

[Chicken Little]

People in pain take drugs. People want to know what the pain is from, so they get XRAYS. Drugs prevent them from following directions and acting like they know what is going on. One size fits all for the clothes, even if you are pregnant. Outpatient XRAY is a study in sociology, as you have now experienced.

[malkin]

Often, people simply don't listen.

And people don't believe that general directions apply to them personally. Things like NO PARKING and "Please return your seat backs and tray tables to their upright position" are more honored in the breach than the observance.

[jessmarimba]

The hospital I stayed in was just rebuilt, since they needed larger beds and larger beds wouldn't fit through the doorways of the old building.

And I kind of enjoyed that the gowns were so large. I couldn't tie them behind me by myself so I wrapped them all the way around - more coverage

The weirdest experience for me was that my wing had an alarm system on the door so that patients with electronic anklets couldn't get out. I guess they sometimes get dementia patients in for long-term therapy but it sort of felt like I was imprisoned.

[Crankin]

Oh, well, I know that people don't listen. In my meager 2 years as a counseling intern with adults, I've seen it all. And I thought I had seen it all working with adolescents!
It was just a silly vent. Maybe they are used to people on pain drugs.

[Kathi]

I once had a PT tell me he liked massaging my back and hip because he could feel my bones, whereas, most people you can't get "through the fat".

I have the same experience with dressing gowns. I just had my mammogram and besides the gown wrapping around me 3 times, I had to roll the sleeves up just so I could use my hands to turn the magazine pages while I sat in the waiting room.

[OakLeaf]

Spend a couple of hours in the ER and you'll overhear a lot of what they have to deal with ... I wonder the opposite, if people who seem articulate and reasonably sane get the attention and explanation we need when we're really too dazed to make any decisions at all. And of course the X-ray techs have to deal with probably a disproportionate number of people sent over from the ER.

I can't believe they let me out of there without a neck X-ray. It's dawned on me gradually how very, very close I came to breaking my neck. I declined a CT of the head because the tech said it was for my jaw and orbit, which quite obviously were not broken. Whether or not I might have had an undisplaced fracture of C1 or C2, OTOH, was not at all obvious.