Discharged, Not Released
The things we bring home from the hospital
It takes me weeks, sometimes months, to recover from a hospital admission. Sometimes it is a stain we can never remove, no matter how hard we scrub. Sometimes it’s a scar upon scars. What hospital admissions leave behind transforms into a map of where the fire burned. Hospitals do not simply foster healing; they can foster and compound trauma. Hospital admissions can create a barrier between us and medical care. We don’t want to return. After this last admission, I want to take a permanent break from all healthcare interactions for the foreseeable future. But I can’t just stop going to the doctor. So my therapy bill continues, stretching on like a never-ending CVS receipt.
Hospitals strip away privacy and autonomy. Patients do not get a say in the day-to-day rhythm of a hospital admission. Routines are decided for you. Your movement is restricted. I couldn’t even go to the restroom without asking for permission first. An alarm was placed on my bed without my informed consent. Every little moment, every word spoken, every conversation is documented, becoming part of a permanent medical record. It almost feels like, “Don’t say anything without a lawyer present.”
Your body is constantly observed. Sometimes by video. You’re woken throughout the night. Hospital admissions cause sleep deprivation that can take weeks to recover from. A couple of years ago, when I was boarded in the emergency department as an admitted patient, I went five straight days without meaningful sleep. The constant burn of fluorescent lights, the parade of chiming hospital equipment, and the endless human chatter at all hours still live inside me. Sometimes I hear machines beeping in the distance that aren’t there. I can’t tolerate bright light without prescription sunglasses that have become a kind of armor.
Decisions happen around you instead of with you. The amount of advocacy a patient must sustain is soul crushing. While fighting for our bodies, we also have to fight for ourselves so our bodies receive the best care possible. Every single healthcare worker—from care techs, to nurses, to medical students, to physicians—can become a traumatic experience waiting to happen. I brace for impact every time someone walks through the door.
Your emotions are exhausted because every interaction feels consequential. Every question feels like it has the potential to change the course of your care. Every answer feels like it could be misunderstood. Every sentence carries the weight of becoming part of your chart forever.
Your brain is exhausted because you have to remember your medical history over and over again. You’re expected to make decisions that could be a matter of life or death while overstimulated, sleep deprived, medicated, and terrified. It’s an obstacle course. In the mud. In the pouring rain.
My body is still in a state of shock after last week’s admission. A television show that brought me immense comfort and joy for more than a decade is now something I can’t bear to watch because it was playing during the traumatic event. My body remembers. I pick up the same brand of alcohol wipes they used in the hospital, and my hands instinctively recoil. My insides shiver. I don’t want them touching my skin. I didn’t have the capacity to say no then. So I had to do the hard thing and brace for more impact. My body remembers.
Someone can survive a car accident knowing the odds of experiencing another one the next day are incredibly small. But for people living with complex chronic illness, another hospitalization is never an abstract possibility. It could be tomorrow. Next week. Next month. Next year. Any interaction with a medical institution has the potential to compound existing trauma. Hospitals have a way of teaching us fears we never imagined having.
We learn to fear security. Being searched. Having our belongings taken. Being watched. Being misunderstood. Being disbelieved. We fear inaccurate documentation. We fear that chart following us through every future medical encounter. We fear losing our autonomy. We fear the sound of footsteps approaching our room because we don’t know what—or who—is coming through the door. And that distrust doesn’t stay behind when we’re discharged.
We are fighting to survive physically, but healthcare systems become something our nervous systems, our spirits, and our souls have to survive too.
People often talk about recovering from the illness that landed us in the hospital. They rarely talk about recovering from the hospitalization itself. Those are not always the same thing. Sometimes the body heals faster than the nervous system. Sometimes the deepest wounds aren’t the ones that brought you through the emergency room doors, but the ones you carry out with you when you leave.
We measure whether patients survive a hospital admission. We rarely ask what survives the hospital admission with them.
People tell us they’re glad we’re home.
I wish coming home meant the hospital stayed behind.
Instead, it follows us through automatic doors at every future appointment.
It follows us into waiting rooms, into MyChart notifications, into the smell of alcohol wipes and the sound of machines beeping in the distance. It settles into our nervous systems, teaching our bodies to brace long before our minds know what they’re bracing for.
Discharge isn’t always the end of a hospitalization.
Sometimes it’s just the beginning of learning how to live with what it left behind.