Controlled, Remotely
The Emergency Department here recently underwent an extensive remodel, much to the delight of staff and patients alike. Thanks to the new floor plan and facilities, staff is better able to keep track of patients, patients are more comfortable in their rooms (and move from the waiting room to their exam rooms more efficiently), and medical students are better able to stalk the emergency docs (in the old facility, the docs had an uncanny ability to flit in and out of patient rooms - seemingly materializing out of thin air, providing patient care, and then disappearing back to the mysterious realm of their offices, that undiscovered country from whose bourn no med student returns). The waiting room has also been converted in the manner of modern hospitals from the classic cramped and harshly lit room filled with mysteriously stained and malevolent furniture and two out-of-date magazines to something very much resembling a hotel lobby, complete with a sweeping mural picked out in multicolored stone, a fun area for kids, and a big-screen TV.
It is to this last that I direct your attention. It is a 50-inch, high definition, flat, plasma-screen LG television that is conveniently located in an alcove big enough for eight people to enjoy it, but peripheral enough not to interfere with people who would rather spend their time in the waiting room in deep introspection or perhaps knitting an acrylic pot scrubbie. It is a lavishly bad-ass television that murmurs soulfully in our patients' (and their families') ears "We've spared no expense in taking care of not only your body and mind, but also your soul's unslakeable thirst for high-definition reality shows depicting people eating live bugs."
Except that every time I stride purposefully through the waiting room with furrowed brow (the only way a med student should travel, even if they're on the way to lunch), the ginormous TV is more likely to be broadcasting a show with bugs eating people than the other way around. For you see, the TV is always on the SciFi channel, 24 hours-a-day. This puzzled me for a while. Is it just a coincidence? Are the patients big S.F. fans? Perhaps the hospital staff members? Of course not, use Ockham's Razor - the simplest explanation is the correct one in this case: we've lost the remote control.
For you see, the TV is brand new, which means that its sleek frictionless surface is uninterrupted by buttons. Without the remote, there's no way to change the channel, the volume, or even to turn the TV off short of unplugging it (and we can't do that, either, without unbolting it from its tasteful wooden recess).
I was approached by a patient's daughter about this a few weeks ago, "Can I change this?" she asked, gesturing to the image of a woman being devoured by a monster that seemed to be a werewolf/cockroach (it was after primetime, so all the thoughtful S.F. had been replaced by horror shows). I shook my head with just the right mix of sorrow and helplessness, "I'm sorry, ma'am, there's nothing we can do." It was good practice for me, as we take classes in delivering bad news to patients. She nodded soberly and sat down to watch the wolfroach finish his snack.
This modern trend of pristine, buttonless appliances has hit us at home, as well. Our DVD player is a few years old, so it still has buttons to "Play", "Stop", and "Eject" DVDs, but most of its functions require the remote control, including the function to put a disc on "Repeat". This is crucial to us, because the DVD player is also our CD player, and we've taken to playing a CD of "Restful Rain" all night long. This CD plays the soothing sounds of very heavy rain and was supplied by our friend Lisa as a weapon in our arsenal in the nightly battle to keep Adelaide asleep. At some point during the Christmas weekend, our remote control disappeared. This coincided with Adelaide having a sniffle and going through her fourth round of teething, i.e. turning into a big old fusspot. We've searched the living room for the remote, and I've scoured the DVD player's owner's manual for some combination of "Play" and "Trackback" that might put it into repeat mode, but to no avail. We're left with a baby who goes to sleep to a CD that plays for 73 minutes. As she drifts off, Aimee and I close our eyes uneasily, knowing that in a little more than an hour the CD will cease and that perhaps 20 minutes after that Adelaide will wake. When she does wake, as Aimee soothes Adelaide, I troop out to the living room to press "Play", attracting the attention of Nine who then loudly requests that I point out her half-full food dish again.
In this way we plod through the night, rousing every 90 minutes, for want of a remote control. I remember fondly my family's VCR from the 80s. It weighed a ton, it was huge, and it bristled with buttons. It had buttons for functions that we never learned to perform, and I suspect it had buttons for things it couldn't even do; hopeful buttons that might some day be called into service if, say, we attached a six-slot toaster to that mysterious access port in the back that we never used.
We've moved away from that with our modern appliances, no doubt for the good. We can now hang our TVs on the wall, install them into our belt buckles, and soon we'll send them attached to envelopes instead of stamps. The TV in the ED lobby is clearly striving to achieve some kind of Platonic Ideal of the Essence of TV-dom. Rather than looking like an electronic appliance that receives and broadcasts video images, it would like to get thinner and sleeker until it can be used for simultaneously watching Reality TV and as a guillotine blade. Which might make a good premise for a show, maybe something that would fit into the SciFi channel's late-night schedule.
Comments
I'm not laughing.
But if it's any consolation, Albert bit the rewind button off our DVD remote, making it impossible to back up a few seconds to clarify what someone said.
Perhaps all remotes should come with clappers installed.
Posted by: Lisa | January 6, 2007 10:31 PM
We still use that video tape player and still don't know what all the buttons do, or at least, I don't. It is also connected to the FM tuner which Doug hooked up to an old, big-screen computer monitor at one end to play movie tapes (which are getting hard to find, by the way) and an antenna on the roof so we can watch broadcast TV. He put a special branch on the antenna (which is mounted on the roof ladder he uses to cliumb up and clean the chimney and adjust the antenna)so I can watch football on Fox. I haven't watched enough of anything this winter to make his effort worthwhile, though I think he enjoyed solving the problem in an innovative way.
Molly
Posted by: Molly Miron | January 8, 2007 11:24 AM
On another note, why doesn't somebody go to Radio Shack or Wal-Mart and buy another remote? Horror films areprobably no conducive to healing.
Molly
Posted by: Molly Miron | January 8, 2007 3:13 PM
I will *give* your hospital another remote, if you tell me the make and model. SciFi 27-7? Shudddder.
On the home front, does your DVD player play MP3 files? If so, rip your CD and copy the MP3 file to a blank CD enough times so that you'll have a night's full of Restful Rain.
Posted by: Susan | January 15, 2007 2:27 PM