Tips For Being Comfortable In The Hospital

By the end of my month-long hospital stay, I felt like I had a new skill set—I’d learned many little tricks for being comfortable. Here are my tips, in loose order of importance, followed by a summary and my hospital packing list.

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Tips For Better Sleep

In hospitals, sleep is often the biggest challenge. Sleep is crucial to healing, and yet there are often noises, lights, and interruptions throughout the night that make it difficult. There are several things you can do, though, to get much more sleep in the hospital.

1. Bring sleep aids: eye mask, ear plugs, and white noise.

A good eye mask will be comfortable and will block virtually all light. This Walgreens one is my favorite. It blocks even the edges of vision, and its shape minimizes pressure on the eyes. Good earplugs are important as well. And a white-noise machine, small fan, or white-noise app on your smartphone will drown out noises such as those from IVs, which might beep and whir all night long.

2. At bedtime, set up your room for comfort.

Shades can be drawn, the temperature adjusted, and blankets added to your bed. If you’re not able to do all this for yourself, your nurse can do it for you—don’t hesitate to ask.

3. Ask for a sign on your door to let you sleep.

Hospital protocols dictate that many patients be checked on periodically throughout the night. Checking vitals, weight, and/or blood draws may be required at regular intervals.

But along with those necessary visits, if you don’t request otherwise, there will also be unnecessary ones that disrupt your sleep even more. I’ve had nurse techs burst in and introduce themselves at 2 a.m.: “Good morning, Katie, I’m Sam, your nurse tech! Is there anything you need?” Why yes, Sam! What I needed was for you to let me sleep!!

Your night nurse should be able to eliminate those unnecessary visits. On your first night, ask that a sign be put on your door requiring everyone to check with your nurse before entering. Your nurse then becomes your Sleep Guardian. The first night, s/he may not be able to shield you as much, but as your needs become better known, it should be possible to reduce your sleep disturbances.

4. Ask whether vitals-checking can be postponed.

Vitals-checking typically happens during the night, but some patients may be able to delay it until 6 am. If you’re hospitalized for inflammatory bowel disease like I was, you can also get around extra, middle-of-night interruptions because your illness will undoubtedly wake you up at some point to use the toilet! Offer to call the nurse when that happens, after you’ve used the bathroom. S/he can check your vitals then, and there will be no need to wake you up another time.

5. If you have insomnia, distract yourself with a good book.

If you are unavoidably up in the middle of the night, as I always was because of my meds, it helps to have quiet entertainment you can enjoy when you’re awake. I always found myself wide awake for two to four hours in the middle of the night, and I would settle in with a juicy book by the light of my headlamp. (My headlamp has a red light feature that is gentle on the eyes at night, making it less disruptive to read when I’m still hoping for more sleep.) 

I actually came to enjoy those quiet, dark hours of reading in the middle of the night. I was exhausted, but the solitude was soothing and I loved the books I was reading.

6. Consider sleep medication. 

I was reluctant to add another med to all the others I’d been given, and I was wary of developing a dependency. But once I started taking trazodone, I slept much better, and I didn’t become dependent on it over the long term.

7. If your room is noisy, request to be moved to a quieter place.

This isn’t always possible, but it sometimes is. It doesn’t hurt to ask! I moved midway through my hospital stay, and the new room made a world of difference.

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General Tips For Physical Healing

1. Be an active participant in your care…

The more engaged you are, the more empowered you’ll feel and the better off you’ll be. You are the only person who has spoken with all of your doctors and nurses. You’re at the center of your own care. Try to understand what decisions are being made and why; ask questions if you don’t understand.

2. …But balance between engagement and letting go.

Although you want to be an active participant, it’s also important to let go of controlling everything. There’s a delicate balance between surrendering to others’ care and being engaged. A certain amount of surrender will help you find more peace in this vulnerable time.

3. Bring a notebook and pen.

It helps to take notes, as well as to write down questions between doctor visits, so you’ll remember them the next time you see a doctor. Loved ones can also share this notebook with you, help you ask your questions, and write down their own.

4. Enlist one or two loved ones to keep close tabs on your care.

If possible, these will be people who can visit often. If that’s not possible, they should at least talk with you and/or your nurse every day on the phone. They should be aware of updates on your medication, tests that have been run, your symptoms, or any other changes. Don’t try to go it alone—you’ll become run down in the hospital, and you need stronger people to help you stay on top of what’s going on.

5. Go for walks.

If at all possible, and if it’s safe, try to walk a few times a day to prevent bed sores and improve circulation, even if it’s hard for you. Doctors will often recommend this, but sometimes they forget to. Nurses also seldom have time to accompany patients on walks. It helps if you take the initiative yourself—ask the doctor or a nurse if it’s recommended in your case.

If you’re on an IV, and if you or a loved one are able-bodied enough to unplug the IV pole from the wall, ask nurses if you can do that on your own timeframe and walk with the IV pole. That way you won’t rely on them to come unhook you from the pole before your walks.

6. Be attentive of hygiene—yours and doctors’.

There is always a danger of infection in hospitals, and some infections, like C. diff, can be life threatening. Doctors and nurses should always wash hands or don new gloves when touching patients, because they (the doctors and nurses) are the most likely vectors for spreading germs.

If you’re able to, wash your own hands frequently, especially after using the bathroom. If you go for walks, avoid touching doorknobs and other surfaces outside of your room. Generally try to keep from touching your face, especially your mouth or eyes, if your hands are not clean.

Shower when possible. It feels great to be clean. Coordinate this with nurses or nurse techs—they can bring you a bathrobe and toiletries, cover your IV port to protect it from water, and change your bedding while you’re out of bed.

7. Request adjunct care you might benefit from.

Hospitals have chaplains, therapists, social workers, physical therapists, nutritionists, and many other specialists. The chaplain, at least, should be free to you. Other specialists may not be, so if you have concerns about the costs of visiting with them, ask your nurses to help you find out. But if it’s affordable, it may be useful to meet with some of these specialists—it’s at least worth asking your doctor about them.

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Tips For Emotional Wellbeing

Your spirit and emotions in the hospital can make an enormous difference in your experience there as well as in your healing. There are many things you can do to make your stay a more nurturing one.

1. Be kind to your care team.

When there’s little else you can control, it’s empowering and meaningful to realize this is a choice you always have: whether or not to be kind to the people around you. It became my mantra in the hospital to be as kind as possible—it often felt like the only thing I could still control. The more I focused on it, the more it helped me. Asking nurses about their lives or jobs distracted me from my own pain.

My kindness reflected back on me, because my nurses, diet hosts, cleaning staff, and others treated me well. I was told a few times that I was a favorite patient, and one day, an anonymous bouquet appeared in my room from “the staff.” The love I felt towards the staff, and the love they reflected back onto me, boosted my spirits. It surely helped me heal faster, too.

2. Nurses make great confidants.

This isn’t always true, but it usually is. Nurses care. They want to bring you comfort. They can be good people to vent to, shoulders to cry on, or even people to laugh with. While many doctors struggle with empathy, this isn’t true of most nurses. I liked most of my doctors, but a few times, when I was frustrated with a doctor’s insensitivity, the nurses seemed to understand. That was so comforting.

3. Let go of “entertaining” visitors.

You’re in the hospital, and you don’t have to be your normal self if you don’t have energy for it. You’re allowed to be exhausted, in pain, and generally not at your best. People will understand.

It took me weeks to learn this. I had the urge to perk up and engage with my visitors, and I turned people away if I thought I’d be in bad form. Later, I realized it would have been okay to let some of them come, as long as they understood that I couldn’t tend to them. 

Visitors should bring entertainment for themselves, and the expectation that you may need to rest when they’re there. My family and I eventually settled into routines where they would often just sit quietly near me, reading or working. I felt relieved to be off the hook, and still grateful to have them at my side. Their quiet, witnessing presence was all I needed.

4. Bring distraction.

Bring a good, juicy book to read, or some other distraction you can immerse yourself in on your smartphone or tablet. Before my crisis, I read mainly nonfiction, but I discovered that what I needed most of all, in the hospital, was escape. Lighthearted fiction was best—romances, cozy mysteries, nothing too heavy or factual. Just good, easy entertainment to take me away from myself and pass the time.

5. Consider spiritual practices.

If you’re into practices like meditation or prayer, it may be helpful to bring your favorite spiritual readings or other sources of solace. Guided practices like Yoga Nidra, meditation for pain relief, and apps like Headspace may be helpful, as well. (Those first two links aren’t ones I’ve tried—I just found them through a quick Google search. There are many to explore!)

I wasn’t up for any of these practices for most of my stay, because my trauma was too raw, and that’s okay, too. But if you are able to be present, these may be helpful.

6. Enjoy the warm blankets and ice chips!

These are my two favorite things about being in a hospital. Both are things you can’t get at home. Whenever I’m in a clinic or ER—which happens a fair amount with my illness—I request them. It’s like going to the dentist and getting lolipops! 🙂 

7. Set up a healing space.

I was surprised to discover how much the appearance of my hospital room affected me. Bright colors felt physically healing—I loved the flowers that accumulated on my windowsill.

Clutter, meanwhile, was a subtle stressor. I realized that belatedly, when I enlisted my family to declutter my room after a few weeks. They put books and belongings in cupboards; I tidied my bed tray, putting small items into a box my mom had brought. It all gave me a subtle but powerful relief.

Different people have different preferences about visuals. When my dad was hospitalized for cancer, we brought him all sorts of flowers and balloons, which he later confessed that he saw as clutter! That had never occurred to me. It’s worth figuring out what you like and don’t like, and asking loved ones and nurses to help you. Can belongings be stowed or tidied? Is there some item from home you’d like brought in, like a plant or a picture? Small visual changes can bring great peace of mind.

8. You don’t have to be pantless! Request or bring pants.

You’ll be given a gown to wear, but you probably won’t be offered pants. Unless your specific ailment requires otherwise, though, you should be able to wear underwear and sweats under your gown! And hospital pants do also exist; you can ask for them. Hospitals have shirts, pants, gowns, and bathrobes sitting in cupboards all over the place. Just ask, or bring your own, and you won’t feel so naked.

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