I Would Be Catatonic Too

As you well know, pretty much every hospital room comes with a TV, and most with a full range of basic cable channels. In fact, at the children's hospital, there is a full X-box set up in most of the rooms, making it difficult to convince them sometimes that it is time to go home.

At the VA, it seems as though the televisions are mostly controlled by a central output. I remember making medicine rounds (now over a year ago!!) at the VA and catching time lapsed segments of the same news broadcast (or Lawrence Welk rerun) as I went from room to room. By the way, as I'm writing this, beer and Starbursts don't go well together, but I keep it up anyway. At UAMS in any patient room that is intensive care or otherwise empty, there is some nature scene with serenading elevator music playing.

But one time, there was something else. I walked into this man's room in the ICU. He was getting frequent followup eye exams by us for something in his orbit. As I walked in, I found on the TV an invigorating episode of Curious George. He was, of course, just staring blankly at the screen.

I think I would also remain catatonic if someone left that on TV for me. I just hope it wasn't on a loop.