Take dad for wheelchair rides when you visit.

mrsconn23

Dear Prudence,

This is rather low-stakes, but it’s something that has really come to irritate me. My father is currently at a rehab facility where he is recovering from the effects of a stroke. I’ve been spending numerous hours visiting him nearly every day. The trouble is that he is sharing a semi-private room with an elderly man who seems to enjoy regaling his many visitors with all the details of his daily enema. Would it be rude of me to tell him to shut up already? My father is likely going to be rehabbing for at least another month. I can’t very well shut my ears off, and I am sick of hearing about this.

—Too Much Information!

banana468

Talk to the staff.  Take Dad out and tell the staff, "I know it's not my business to start to police roommates but is there anything that you can do to talk to Edgar so every visit to my dad is not spent visualizing what he's talking about?"   

But good luck getting an old man to change.

levioosa

I promise you your Dad would be absolutely ecstatic if you were to take him in the wheelchair out to the garden. My dad cried when we took him downstairs from the facility and had his dog waiting to see him. Rehabbing from a stroke is hard enough, and you can start to feel trapped if you only are seeing the PT room and your "home" room. But the roommate? That's a lost cause trying to get him to change.

short+sassy

Taking dad out of his room is such an obvious solution, I'm wondering if there is a reason that can't be done.

I also wanted to comment about what I personally find a weird, side-eye phrase.  "Semi-private".  It's like someone saying they are a little bit pregnant, lol.  It's private or it's not.  If it's shared with another person, then it's not private so stop with this "semi" nonsense.  Call it a shared room.

Maybe there are areas of hospitals that have a whole bunch of beds in one room, so "semi-private" is differentiating it from that.  But I still think it is a poor word choice.

levioosa

short+sassy said:

Taking dad out of his room is such an obvious solution, I'm wondering if there is a reason that can't be done.

I also wanted to comment about what I personally find a weird, side-eye phrase.  "Semi-private".  It's like someone saying they are a little bit pregnant, lol.  It's private or it's not.  If it's shared with another person, then it's not private so stop with this "semi" nonsense.  Call it a shared room.

Maybe there are areas of hospitals that have a whole bunch of beds in one room, so "semi-private" is differentiating it from that.  But I still think it is a poor word choice.

It always cracks me up with people throw around defense of HIPAA in a shared space like that. There is literally zero way to communicate about a private health issue in a shared space. Last time my grandmother was in the hospital, she had a roommate, and I was already suspicious about this roommate and the reason she was there. Grandma was in for a non-communicable skin infection and she is very fragile with severe COPD and she's over 90. Her roommate/roommate's family didn't speak any English, but I knew enough Spanish to figure out that roommate was there because they had pneumonia and then I was furious. You cohort patients based on similar diseases/communicability. You don't room a frail elderly patient with COPD with someone with active fucking pneumonia. Her doctor came in a few minutes later and I told him (he wasn't the roommate's doctor), and I saw his face drop and then become really upset before he was able to mask it. Then he left and thirty minutes later they moved us to another room with a non-infectious roommate. Shared rooms are already the worst. But at least be as safe as is possible. 

On another, funny note, when my Dad had his stroke somehow wires became crossed and the staff thought we were some big fish to the hospital. They didn't regulate his visitors, they moved him to the biggest suite on a semi private floor, the charge nurse was his primary nurse, and the nurses all commented trying to figure out how exactly we were connected to the C-suite. We weren't about to tell them no thank you, we're nobody, please move us to a shared room. lol. The day before he was moved to the second facility, they figured it out and he got "downgraded" to a room with three patients and he was upset. Sir, you were living the good life, this is the norm. lol. 

ei34

Yes!  One of the kids was in the hospital for a few nights years ago (2016, completely pre-Covid) and I was told she wasn't allowed to visit to child-life room or take walks on the floor out of risk of infection.  But...she could have a roommate?  Which is it?

banana468

@levioosa I was so grateful that when Chiquita was first admitted last year she never had a roommate in the shared room that she was originally assigned to.  And then she was assigned to a room for transplant patients (nice and quiet!!) followed by a standard private room.  I also would have been highly pissed if in the state of her immune system if she was put in a position to be exposed to a contagious disease!  On top of it she was also going to be a horrible roommate to anyone.