Journaling in Hospital

  1. I’ve been spending practically every day for the past week or so with my dad in hospital.
  2. There’s this phenomena that when you most need journaling, the it will help you the most, you find yourself least able to do it.
  3. Hospitals are journaling hostile environments. There are no tables to use, there’s constant noise and distractions, there’s zero privacy and you never know when the staff will pop into the room with something. Whether you yourself are hospitalized or you’re there with someone else, there’s very little opportunity to crack open your journal and start writing.
  4. Hospitals are also where weird, interesting, scary and new things happen, so you generally do what to write about them, to process them on paper. Fo instance, today three policemen escorted a prisoner into the heart surgery department. It wasn’t something I ever expected to see, a sort of non-sequitur that took me a minute or two to process.
  5. The solution is to take temporary notes on your phone, put a reminder for an appointment with your journal in the evening or when things quiet down around you.
  6. If you’re the one hospitalized, try to journal two or three times a day, documenting what’s going on, how you’re feeling, what the staff said, who visited you, etc. The best time to journal is during the nursing staff shift changes, because that’s when nobody will bother you.
  7. Journaling is like running – oftentimes it’s really hard to start, but I haven’t regretted a run or a journaling session yet.
At night you can escape to these empty spaces and write

9 thoughts on “Journaling in Hospital”

  1. Jean Wilcox's avatar

    Jean Wilcox

    “Hospitals are journaling hostile environments” is the absolute truth. Whether a visitor or patient. I spent some time in hospital and rehab last spring … of course had my journal and pens with me and wrote nothing on paper. Did make notes on my phone. And I have some friends that I email with and our conversations there provide a form of journaling.

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  3. debraji's avatar

    debraji

    I found journaling in the hospital in the small hours to be a way to keep my balance in the face of terrible fear. (My six year old had leukemia.) But it was easier to manage once we were back home! I filled journal after journal.

    I hope your dad continues to do well.

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      1. debraji's avatar

        debraji

        Thank you. They were hard years, but he’s fine now–all grown up and with a family of his own. I’m sure not all of the kids we met in the hospital were so lucky.

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