The Hospital

Hospitals smell.

The sterile smell is everywhere, its as if you can actually taste the bleach they use to clean the floor, walls, ceiling, whatever, you name it. The thought of spending a night in a hospital sends shivers down my spine, especially as thought of rogue bleach particles floating around in the air invading my nostrils and beginning a dance of erosion on my turbinates.

But no matter how much you hate the smell of hospitals, there will be at least one time in your college life you will somehow end up there.

-- Simmone Cullen, Points In Case

Yes, you people in college/university know this all too well. I wouldn't be surprised if you've been admitted to hospital more than once for you know what. Binge drinking.

Drinking is all fun and well, especially with your mates. Young people nowadays think they're invincible. Cigarettes, drugs, and alcohol cannot kill you. You are invincible. I wonder where these insinuations come from. Maybe we've been watching too much TV. News flash people, binge drinking will kill you (as will smoking and taking drugs)! Lets face it, there's always someone at a party, think 21st birthday celebrations, who will inevitably try to consume more than their body weight in alcohol. I suppose its customary, maybe even a right of passage into adulthood. And guess where they end up? Yes, in the bleach coated institution affectionately known as, the hospital -- getting your stomach pumped. That can not be a pleasant experience, with the tubes down your throat and the feeling of your gut being sucked out.

One would think that if you ever survive a stomach pumping, you'd never binge drink again. Oh, how wrong can we be. In fact, I believe, the idea of teenage invincibility doesn't stem from TV, or from the movies, or any mass media. It comes from the amazing medical breakthroughs that gave us the stomach pumping procedure. Lets think about this for a moment -- if stomach pumping did not exist, there would probably be several deaths by alcohol. What better way to teach us ignorant humans, and teenagers, that we can die! **gasp** We'd probably think twice before ever binge drinking again. But of course, that would never happen, because someone will eventually say, "Hey, how about I stick a vacuum cleaner hose down your throat and suck your insides out!". What a brilliant idea!

There are a lot of hospital related TV shows nowadays: Grey's Anatomy, Scrubs, ER etc. Notice how the doctors and nurses are all really good looking? Most of the elements of such TV drama/comedy, dramedy -- new word coined since the existance of Desperate Housewives, shows are superficial in nature, focusing on the bold and the beautiful. What we need to see is all the bloody, gory, nitty gritty stuff that happens in real life hospitals, not the allusion that if you spend a day in a hospital you'd be tossed right in the middle of an exciting episode of Grey's Anatomy or ER. However, unfortunately the scenes where medicine is actually being practiced are there to keep the flow going. There should be shows specifically designed to show us that we are all fragile and vunerable, and they do -- to a certain extent, and that, if we don't take care of ourselves, we might end up on a well lit narrow bed with various people poking the insides of our bodies with strange looking tools while our innards hang out.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate these kinds of shows, they provide some form of entertainment on a cold dull winter's night. Amazingly, I happen to appreciate doctors too. Because maybe one day, one of them could potentially break my heart. And no, I'm not talking about love.

P/S: Clinics are hospitals, only smaller.