Intensive care units
Like Douglas MacArthur and an NSF check, I have returned.
During my Medical Misadventure, (also known as The Recent Unpleasantness) I was obliged to spend almost a month in ICU's. Damned unpleasant places they are, too. The staff within were almost invariably nice. The places themselves suck however, from the patient's point of view.
The thing you have to remember as an inmate of an ICU is that the operative term is "intensive". If you weren't extremely fucked up, you wouldn't be in the ICU to begin with. Therefore, the staff is deeply involved in doing intensive shit to you, and because you're fucked up, they're going hard at it 24/7. "Intensive" means they will wake your ass up every hour or so in order to insert or extract something into you or from you, or insist on you performing some goddamned regimen/therapy/whatever or another to their satisfaction. Since they outnumber you, and take breaks and work in shifts, you cannot resist (even if you had the strength-- remember, you are intensively fucked up here) and there is no escape.
You can adapt to this regimen in a limited number of ways:
1. You are so fucked up you are unconscious, and lie there oblivious to what is going on around you. I was in a chemically-induced coma for the first 8 days or so of my ICU stay, and I can tell you with certainty that this is the best way to go, hands-down. Of course, the flip side to this option is that it usually means that you are sooo fucked up that any benefit you derive from this state translates out on the other end as even more time stuck in the ICU once you wake up. The best deal would be where you spend the ICU time out like a light, and wake up just after they wheel you into a normal hospital room. Beats the hell out of me how you could arrange this, though.
2. You have the happy knack of being able to be wakened, tortured and then falling peacefully asleep as soon as said torture is over. This isn't as hard as it sounds at first. Keeping it up for weeks may be beyond the capacity of most mortals, however. If you are one of these rare birds who can pull this off, I hope a cat knocks you over, and eats you alive slowly, after torturing you for hours with its claws. Bitch.
3. You adopt the ICU schedule. This, by the way, is the least-recommended option as far as I'm concerned, because this is where I ended up. In this option, since the ICU staff is up and about 24/7, you stay up 24/7 too. The flaw in this adjustment is readily apparant. There are many of them and only one of you, they take breaks, and they go home when their shift ends whereas you stay there at the ICU. It leads to a recognized phenomenon known as "ICU psychosis", which is doctor-talk for "going crazy in the ICU". It is even money on what is actually causing the psychosis-- near-terminal sleep deprivation, or the truly, awesomely horrible shit they show on TV in the wee hours of the morning.
You can also die, which sort of takes care of the whole issue too, but is, well, permanent, if you know what I mean.
Speaking of dying, I feel a vague annoyance that I did not die during this little episode. From all reports, I was doing a splendid job of dying-- dignified, head up, on the bounce, calm in the face of disaster, etc. I survived, however, against the odds. This means that sometime in the future, I shall have to try and do the whole damned thing over again, and maybe not do as well.
I hate wasting good work.