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The smell of hospitals in winter

The smell of hospitals in winter

Last updated on: December 31, 2025 at 4:12 pm by Fred Clark

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The smell of hospitals in winter 2025-12-31T16:12:08-05:00 Fred Clark

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When they sent my wife home from the hospital back in October, they put us on a low-sodium diet, just to be on the safe side. Her blood pressure was higher than they liked and they weren’t sure if it was actually that high or if it was just elevated due to the pain from the botched dental work that had caused the infection that had required a week of IV antibiotics. When in doubt, doctors like to tell you to cut back on the salt. That’s generally the healthiest advice.

And but so last weekend, after she fainted and couldn’t quite get a hold of her equilibrium, we wound up back in the emergency room where a blood test found she had extremely low sodium. The ER nurse said it was the lowest she’d ever seen. The PA just said, “Holy s–t, that’s really low.”

It turns out sodium isn’t like the other electrolyte crashes she’s had where they can just squeeze a bag of magnesium or potassium into her arm and then send her home. Sodium has to be restored slowly so as to avoid [long list of potential scary bad outcomes that I mostly tuned out because they sounded scary and bad]. And so they told us, last Monday night, that she’d be there in the hospital for the next three or four days, even though days three and four of that were Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

This was not where we wanted to be on those days, but when you hear yourself complaining about that, saying things like “People should be home with their families on Christmas,” you can’t help but realize that you’re saying that surrounded by lots of very kind and capable people working there who do not get to be home with their families on Christmas because they’re there taking care of you and of dozens of other people with even bigger problems, many of whom would not just not be going home for Christmas, but would not be going home at all. And that puts things in perspective.

And also we weren’t alone in there.

Our older daughter came in to show us the new ring on her left hand — she’s engaged! That’s a happy exclamation point there because this is unambiguously happy news. Not every engagement is unambiguously happy, but she found herself a keeper and our future son-in-law is someone who loves and respects her and treats her right.

Our younger daughter also visited, along with her long-term boyfriend, who seemed a bit relieved when I reminded him that her sister’s engagement buys him time. (After all, you wouldn’t want to look like you were stepping on her sister’s big moment, would you?)

Oh, and Santa came by. Our friend Jason is the semi-official town Santa and rides in the fire truck passing out candy to children on Christmas Eve every year. It took him a while to get in and out of the hospital when he came to visit us wearing the suit. The hospital doesn’t have a pediatric ward, but he still wound up stopping in almost every room because it turns out that even most adults stuck in the hospital on Christmas Eve are happy to get a visit from Santa Claus himself.

We got discharged late in the afternoon on Christmas Day. This time they put us on a high-sodium diet, which seems strange. “Heart healthy” low-sodium chicken stock? No way! We’re sticking with the good stuff — doctor’s orders.

This means we’re also allowed — ordered, really — to enjoy Santa’s barbecue. (Jason owns and operates a fine BBQ joint just up the street from my wife’s salon. If you’re ever out on the Main Line, and hungry, check it out.)

We were also instructed to monitor her sodium levels, which is frustrating since there’s no simple at-home method for doing that. Instead you get a list of vague symptoms to watch out for — fatigue, confusion, aches, unease, anxiety, tension — most of which also seem like just a general description of being in your 50s. It’s also complicated because the symptoms of low sodium are quite similar to the symptoms of worrying that you might again have low sodium.

On the positive side, her doctors are confident that the GI surgery she had at the start of the year was a complete success. The string of electrolyte crashes she’s had since then might’ve been a sign of something wrong with that, but they think it’s unrelated.

Alas, that also means they’re still not sure why this keeps happening, or if it will happen again. (One odd running gag throughout all of these hospital visits is the string of reports from the nephrologist, who always comes across as overly eager to find some kidney problem at the root of this and then always seems deflated when he reports back that her kidneys are functioning perfectly. He always looks like he thinks we’re deliberately snubbing his involvement. Sorry to disappoint you again Mr. Nephrologist.)

Anyway, her sodium was very low and now it’s not, and they sent us home assuring us that she should be just fine, probably. Almost certainly. And she just needs to get some rest and take it easy and don’t worry about anything. Unless she feels dizzy again, in which case we should drop everything and rush her back in there without hesitation because her life may depend on that. But otherwise, don’t worry.

This time of year I usually wind up listening to Counting Crows’ “Long December” at least once or twice. That’s where the title for this post comes from, a line I can relate to these days “The smell of hospitals in winter / And the feeling that it’s all a lot of oysters but no pearl.” But then there’s also this, “There’s reason to believe that maybe this year will be better than the last.”

That’s true for us. We’re not just being irrationally hopeful — we have reasons to believe we have a better year ahead. Granted, that’s partly because it’s been not just a long December, but a long year, and after such a long year it’s hard not to imagine that next year is bound to be a little bit better. And because this long year has forced us to understand that we need to let go of some things we’ve been struggling to keep. I read something somewhere that said “Test everything; hold on to the good.” Some of what we’ve been holding onto won’t survive the testing, but what we’ll be left with is still very good.

And there’s a wedding to plan. (!)

Spending most of last week in the hospital derailed my usual Christmas Eve posting traditions here* — that Annie Lamott advent essay and “Fairytale of New York” and the Brokeback shepherds abiding in the field as the angel tells them good news for all people means all people. I post those every year because I need to see them and remember them myself.

“Can’t make it out alone,” Shane sings to Kirsty. “God has set up a tent among us and will help us work together on our stuff. And this will only happen over time,” Father Tom says to Anne. These are things I need to remember because they are reasons to believe that maybe this year will be better than the last.

So anyway, to make up for the lack of that Christmas Eve post, and because it’s still Christmas, here’s “Fairytale,” as performed at Shane McGowan’s funeral, in church, with laughter and dancing.

Happy New Year.

* It also mostly derailed my efforts to make December a fundraising month here at the blog. But since I still have a few hours left to sneak this in one more time … Here again is my PayPal link, and here’s my Venmo: @George-Clark-61. Thanks.

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