Hospital Pizza and Pie in the Sky Pizza

Another day brought pizza to mom's hospital room, which, in turn, led my father and I to have our own pizza hankering. Or maybe our pizza hankering came out of my father's desire to watch Pacific and Treme, and not enough time to out before these shows.
We ordered a large pizza, half of which was made my way, half his way...my way = olives and artichokes, his way = pepperoni. All of it, at my father's behest, had extra cheese. It was delicious. I also like Treme the television show well enough.

Another Meal Mom Ate, and Barbeque c/o Hog Heaven

I recall this set of meals being eaten on a rather shitty day, hospital-wise. But Mom says that this is one of her favorite hospital meals. I think she's referring mainly to the beef stew, not the Jello or carrots...but I could be mistaken.

Dad went out and came back with Hog Heaven barbeque, which was good though not overly exciting to me. It may have been the day. The meat could have been more moist and I thought the potatoes tasted funny. Is it possible to put too much butter in potatoes? I felt like they had too much of some weird, cloying taste. I also think it's funny that I assume that if I order mashed potatoes they will necessarily come with gravy, but twice I have ordered mashed potatoes in Nashville, and twice they have come with no gravy.

Hospital Pizza and Samurai Sushi

So, my parents live about an hour and a half away from the hospital where my mother was staying, which meant that that it made more sense to stay in Nashville instead of commute back and forth every day. This led, as I'm sure you noticed, to a lot of un-homecooked meals. I like eating out, and I like trying new places, so while the circumstances of my time in Nashville has been entirely crappy, I can't help but enjoy the excuse not to cook my own meals (though I need to work on eating more vegetables). Regardless, mom's lunch on this particular day was pizza and overly cooked asparagus. The pizza, each time I saw it, actually looked pretty good.
While Mom ate pizza in the hospital, I walked to nearby Samurai Sushi. I sat at the sushi bar and the woman two seats down from me asked me if I was from the area, to which I replied no...she then told me that I had picked the best sushi joint in town. Having only tried one other, years back, I don't have the true ability to compare, but I really enjoyed my meal. Unfortunately Samurai Sushi doesn't seem to have a website for me to look back upon and remember the name of the crazy roll I ordered....but it had white tuna and all sorts of crazy sauces.
In addition to the fancy roll, I ordered ikura, white tuna, and spicy tuna. All was good. The ikura portions were very generous, almost more than I needed.
When the sushi chef saw that I was taking photographs (the woman and I were basically the only people in the restaurant, which makes sense since I went after the lunch hour rush time) he made up a little taste of something else. This comped three-roll was a staggering compilation of salmon, tuna, shrimp tempura, kiwi and some sort of rice paper instead of seaweed. It was really good. I also saw the assistant sushi chef guy make some sort of roll topped with seaweed salad...I'm hoping to get back there and try it.

This seems to be a quality place that engenders loyalty. My seating mate brought her own sushi knife with her, which she seems to do each time she comes in. She told me she would bring it in, show it to the chef, and if it needed sharpening he would tell her and then go and sharpen it for her. Any place that fosters that kind of staff/guest relationship is clearly on the up and up. Go there.

Meals Mom Ate, and a Momentary Return to Subway/Cafeteria Fare

On Monday I started taking photographs of the grub my mother was having come her way. I think a day after this particular set of meals, we realized that she could slightly tailor her fare to her preferences, but things were pretty grim in terms of the food department. I believe this meal consists of a tomato soup, canned pears and cottage cheese.
I fell back into thinking that maybe Subway sandwiches and cafeteria food were the way to gain food strength on this day, but I was wrong. The sandwich was a total let down, and the corn fritters, which looked great from the outside, were not pleasing on the inside. I think this could have been more a matter of my always expecting corn fritters to be more savory, and their tendency to be rather sweet. Across from the hospital was Centennial Park and the Parthenon. A really great outdoors space, with all these magical glider benches. Any time I took a break from the hospital room I'd end up on one of these gliders, reading a book, making a phone call, eating a sandwich, or staring at my hands.
Dinner that day was a peanutbutter sandwich, chocolate cake and milk. Maybe this was another lunch? Or maybe this was when Mom started to get to decide what she was going to eat. Though I'm not sure she touched the cake. Some of the desserts were straight up disgusting to look at. I didn't try them to know for sure.

A New Method

So, to visit my mom's room, we had to wear gloves and a mask in an effort to prevent nasty little anythings from jumping from our mouths or hands to her compromised immune system. You kind of get used to it, though I found using a computer's built in mouse a challenge...and that there is definitely something to be said for breath mints. But the most important thing gained (other than keeping my mother from getting an infection) was the realization that this look is a pretty foolproof way to hide a double chin.

Subway Sandwich

When a friend or relative is in the hospital over an extended amount of time, one usually falls into a bit of a routine. My first full day in Nashville this included leaving my mother's room/hall for lunch in the hospital's greater cafeteria, which had a Dairy Queen, Subway, and more traditional cafeteria fare (mashed potatoes, corn nuggets, pizza etc). My father left our Subway sandwich construction up to me, so I went with salami, tomatoes, black olives, yellow pepper rings, pickles, jack cheese, salt and pepper and mayonnaise. It was a fine sandwich, in that way that Subway sandwiches can be considered fine.

Good Intentions

There was an ever-shifting bunch of nurses on my father's floor. The first one I met was new to the hospital and per-ky. She bought this barbie doll for my father and made a little card that later would have the added touch of stickers. A nice gesture to my father and our family since no one was going to be coming with the normal flowers/cards etc...except for the fact that every day thereafter my father requested that either my mother or I return the doll to the nurse. I insisted that the proper etiquette was to wait until he was actually discharged before so blatantly disregarding the gift. Still, a pretty funny thing to have around a hospital room. I may write at some point about the strange etiquette of sharing a room with another person when going through a health crisis. That was weird.

Reasons To Take Care Of Yourself

On Thursday my mother called me to let me know that my father was in the hospital. This was a bit of a long time in coming. Since they've been traveling (including their visit to Philly) my father's breathing was, shall we say, constantly wheezy. They (my parents) were relatively optimistic about the length of his stay...mainly that they thought he would be out by Saturday. So I went to work on Friday and then headed down to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania where they had been staying in preparation for a matriarchal family reunion of sorts in Gettysburg that weekend. The hospital food shown above is what my father had for lunch, or perhaps it was dinner, on Saturday. See, because there was no way they were letting him out that easy. I've been down there since...well, except that now I'm back in Philadelphia...but they're still in Chambersburg and will probably be there until at least Friday...or maybe tomorrow. I'm a little unclear.

I've never had so much hospital visiting experience and I won't lie, it's not so fun. Not so fun to wait for hours or days for some idea of what's going on or happening, not so fun to see a parent all connected to IVs, oxygen and the like, not so fun to see the non-hospitalized parent deal with the fact that their spouse is in the hospital. In the end it was serious but not as serious as it could have been or, if life changes aren't implemented, could be. Basically (and Dad, forgive me if you want this private) it goes like this: some time in the last months or years my father had a heart attack that was not attended to or diagnosed as such. Since then he's been walking around with a less than perfect ticker. The wheezy-ness we noted earlier was a sign of his heart working too hard, beating too fast and irregularly. There was serious talk for a few days of splents and by-pass surgery that really freaked all of us out, especially since they were in a town not their own. It's a strange thing to have to deal with this kind of stress and worry and not have a proper home to return to at the end of visiting hours. There will be more posts because food was still eaten and the family reunion did go on and I, more than my mother, did participate...but yeah, after a much talked about and twice delayed test it turns out that though my father's heart is damaged in multiple places it's not damaged enough to be treated surgically. Which, as we understand it, is a good thing.