The Day the Hospital Treated Me Like a Human Being

Hospital visits can start to feel like rehearsed disappointment when you live with sarcoidosis, heart failure, and the long, exhausting reality of chronic illness. I know that feeling well. So when I went to Westchester Medical Center for a right heart catheterization and was met with kindness, answers, eye contact, and actual respect, it caught me completely off guard. In this episode, I talk about why simple human decency can change the emotional weight of a procedure, why bad attitudes linger in the body, and why compassion in healthcare is not some deluxe extra. Sometimes good care is not only about what gets done. Sometimes it is about how you are treated while it happens.

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Transcript

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The automatic doors opened, and that familiar hospital air hit me. Part antiseptic, part tired ventilation, part old dread that apparently still knows my name. Hello? And welcome to Thoughts While Surviving Chronic Illness. I'm Tate. Today I want to talk about how one hospital visit surprised me by being kind, respectful, and almost suspiciously humane. If you live with chronic illness long enough, you start collecting things nobody in their right mind would want to collect. Some people bring home magnets from vacation, some people collect antiques, baseball cards, nice bottles of wine. I collect bad appointments, clipped tones, sighs from behind desks, and those weird little moments where somebody in Scrubs makes me feel like I personally scheduled my illness just to inconvenience them before lunch. It is not a fun collection. It is not even a collection I asked for. But if your life involves sarcoidosis, heart failure, procedures, follow-ups, scans, blood work, and enough hospital bracelets to make your wrist look like it joined the world's saddest music festival, then sooner or later you end up with a pretty crowded shelf. And what gets me is not even always the big stuff. Obviously, the big stuff matters. Bad outcomes matter, mistakes matter, delays that affect care matter. But I am talking about those smaller moments that somehow manage to crawl right under your skin. The tone, the indifference, the feeling that the person speaking to you has already decided you are one more problem, standing between them and whatever else they would rather be doing. There is something about that, especially when you are already scared, already tired, already fasting, already trying to act more relaxed than you feel, that makes it land harder than it should. Or maybe not harder than it should, maybe exactly as hard as it should. Because when you are the one in the gown, the one being wheeled somewhere, the one waiting to hear what your heart or lungs are doing now, dignity is not some extra garnish on the plate. It matters. Respect matters. Eye contact matters. Having somebody answer a question like, you are an actual human being, and not a pop-up notification they wish would disappear, that matters too. So when I say this visit caught me off guard, I mean it really did. I had a right heart catheterization at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, New York, and I left with something I do not usually bring home from ambulatory surgery. I left smiling. I know. I hear it too, it sounds fake. It sounds like the kind of thing you say, after anesthesia if nobody important is around to fact check you. This was before COVID, and I've been back there many times, for many procedures since, and I can assure you this was not a one-time thing. But I want to share my first experience there with you. Smiling on the way out of a hospital is not usually how these stories go. Usually the best version is that the procedure went well, nobody lost your paperwork, the IV was placed without turning it into an excavation project, and you made it home before the day fully collapsed under its own fluorescent lighting. That is usually the goal. Survival, discharge, and maybe a cracker. But from the minute my wife and I walked in, something felt different. We stopped at the information desk to ask where admitting was, and the gentleman there was pleasant, clear, and helpful. Not cartoonishly cheerful, not robotic, not fake in that aggressive customer service way. That makes you wonder if they are blinking SOS in Morse code. Just calm, decent, helpful. And if you do not spend much time in hospitals, that may not sound like much. But if you do, you know exactly why I noticed it. Then, as we made our way through the building, staff members actually smiled and said, Good morning. More than one. Repeatedly. And again, I know that sounds tiny. I know it probably sounds like I am handing out awards for basic social function. But that is part of the problem. In too many medical spaces, basic social function starts to feel like luxury care. You are not greeted, you are processed, you are not welcomed, you are moved around like luggage with a chart. So, yes, I noticed the smiles, I noticed the tone, I noticed that nobody looked at me like I had wandered in uninvited. My nervous system noticed it before the rest of me did. That is the weird thing about living with chronic illness for years. Your body becomes a kind of weather station for risk. It can tell when a room feels safe before your brain has finished introducing itself. When we got to admitting, nobody was at the desk. Now normally that is the exact point where my spirit starts slowly leaving my body and looking for better real estate. Because an empty desk in a hospital can mean anything. It can mean someone will be right back. It can mean someone vanished into an administrative wormhole. It can mean you are now part of a silent test of patience nobody warned you about. But some orderlies nearby saw us standing there and came over to let us know someone would be back in a minute. Kindly. Calmly, no attitude. No look that said, yes. Obviously the desk is empty. Use your imagination. Just simple reassurance. And then a man came out, smiling, took my information, and led us to a waiting area. Again, none of this is dramatic. That is kind of the point. It was not dramatic, it was decent. And decency can feel downright shocking when you are used to something colder. Then a woman came to call my name, she smiled, said good morning, asked how my day was going, and brought me into her office. And this was the moment where I had one of those tiny internal pauses. Because instead of tossing forms at me and indicating where to sign like I was closing on a hostage release, she actually went through my information with me. With me. Like I might know something about my own life. Like the person attached to the chart was worth speaking to directly. That should not be remarkable. I know that. It should be standard, but the bar's gotten so low in some places that when somebody does the humane version of their job, you start half expecting a documentary crew to pop out from behind a ficus. Because I know the other version too. The rushed version. The detached version. The one where somebody's already walking away while still talking to you. The version where paperwork is shoved into your hand while you're hungry, nervous, and try not to think too hard about what exactly is going to happen once they roll you upstairs. Efficient, maybe. Human, not especially. When she finished, she brought me back out, told us to wait until a nurse came for me and wished me luck. Wished me luck. Like a person. Not as a line from a script she had repeated so many times that had gone dead in her mouth. It sounded real, and by then I was honestly wondering whether I had somehow crossed into an alternate universe, where hospitals remembered patients are not just bodies being moved through a system. We are people, scared people, tired people, people who have already had enough. I have had a lot of care at Mount Sinai over the years. Surgeries, scans, follow-ups, more tests, more appointments, more waiting rooms, then I care to count. And to be fair, not everyone there has been bad. Some people have been kind, some have been excellent. I am not trying to flatten every medical experience into one complaint. But I have also run into that very specific kind of medical staff member who can sour an entire day with one grunt, one look, one tone that says your presence is being tolerated at best. And unfortunately, at Mount Sinai, my negative experiences have far outweighed the positive ones. And people who do not live with chronic illness may not always understand how much that matters. When you are already stressed, one rude interaction is not just one rude interaction. It spreads. It changes the shape of the day. It gets stored in your body right alongside everything else. Your body remembers the procedure, sure. But it also remembers the desk, the hallway, the nurse who answered you like you were a nuisance, the person who never came back, the question that got brushed aside. That stuff adds up. But so does the good stuff. Once I got into the cardiac catheter unit, every nurse and staff member I met was pleasant, helpful, and friendly. Every single one. I kept waiting for the turn. I kept expecting someone to come in carrying that familiar cloud of irritation like it was required by uniform policy. But it never happened. At one point I asked a nurse how long she thought it might be before my procedure. A normal question, a completely ordinary question. Yet in a lot of hospitals, that kind of question gets you one of the classics. I do not know. They will call when ready. And then the person disappears so thoroughly, you start wondering if they were ever there at all, or if stress has finally pushed you into seeing staff-shaped mirages. But this nurse actually went upstairs to the cath lab to find out for me. She physically checked. Then she came back, apologized, and explained that one of the rooms had a computer issue. So they were down a room, and it would probably be about an hour. I was stunned. Not because of the delay. Delays are basically part of the medical ecosystem. At this point they are less an inconvenience and more a recurring character. What stunned me was that she checked, returned, explained it clearly, and apologized. She treated my question like it deserved an answer. She treated my time like it counted. She treated me like someone worth updating. And that changes the whole emotional temperature of a day. It does not erase the fear. Let us not get carried away. I was still there for a right heart catheterization, not a spa treatment with cucumber water and soft flute music. I was still anxious. I was still waiting. I was still very aware of why I was there. But kindness lowers the volume on fear. Information lowers it too. Being spoken to like a person lowers it. You stop feeling like you are trapped inside a machine, built entirely out of clipboards, policies, and hallway size. And really, that was the gift of that day. People. People who smiled, people who answered, people who explained. People who did not act like kindness and efficiency were locked in some ancient blood feud, and only one could survive. When you live with chronic illness, hospitals do not sit outside your life as occasional, dramatic interruptions. They become part of the structure of your life. You know where to park, you know what to bring. You know which chairs are survivable and which ones feel like punishment designed by committee. You know the smell before you even walk in. You know how to tell your medical history with the exhausted rhythm of somebody narrating a documentary they never auditioned for. And you also learn that medical trauma is not only made of the big cinematic moments. Sometimes it is built from smaller things, stacked one on top of another until your body starts reacting before your mind has caught up. The clipped tone, the unanswered question, the little bit of attitude, the sense that your fear is inconvenient, the feeling that you are one more task to be completed and moved along. Those things pile up. But the opposite piles up too. A smile piles up, a clear answer piles up. A gentle voice piles up. A nurse who comes back with real information piles up. Being treated with respect piles up. If you are living with sarcoidosis and heart failure, you are already bringing enough with you into a procedure day. You are thinking about the test, the result, the recovery, the next appointment, the fatigue afterward, the bills, the phone calls, the possibility of answers, the possibility of more questions, because medicine loves a sequel. Your mind is already overbooked. You should not also have to spend energy bracing for somebody else's attitude. The procedure itself went well, and obviously that matters. I am a huge fan of boring procedures. Boring is wonderful. Boring is deeply underrated. Nobody wants their medical chart to read like a thriller. Quiet competence is beautiful. But what stayed with me most was not only that the right heart cath went smoothly, it was the way I was treated before it happened. I was out by three in the afternoon, which in hospital time feels almost supernatural. And later, as if the day had not already been strange enough in a good way, I got an email from the doctor apologizing for the wait time. The wait time, I actually laughed when I read it. My internal scale for medical waiting is so warped at this point that an hour with an explanation barely even registers. I have spent enough time waiting in gowns under weak blankets and rooms with no answers to know this was nothing. But the apology still mattered, because again, it showed awareness, it showed respect, it showed that someone understood patients, notice how they are treated, not just what gets done to them. And maybe that is part of the problem. The bars dropped so low in too many places that basic decency now feels like premium care. It should not. It should be standard. It should not feel like spotting a unicorn in non-slip socks. I am not naive about health care. I know hospitals are difficult places to work. I know staff are stretched thin. I know people are tired, overworked, under pressure, and carrying burdens I do not see. I am not asking for perfection. I am not asking for aromatic oils and violin accompaniment. I am asking for dignity, not to be treated like an optional add-on. A smile matters. Tone matters. Answers matter. Being treated like a person matters. If somebody walks into a hospital already frightened, already exhausted, already vulnerable, they should not also need emotional armor for basic human interaction. That should not be part of the prep instructions. This experience reminded me that good care starts long before the procedure room. It starts at the front desk. It lives in the hallway. It is there in the voice that says, good morning. It is there when someone checks your information with you, instead of firing forms at you like paper shrapnel from a very unhappy parade. It is there when a nurse follows through. It is there when a doctor apologizes for a delay that, honestly, barely qualified as one. That kind of care does not cure chronic illness. If kindness cured sarcoidosis, I would be recording this from a beautiful porch somewhere near the water, wearing expensive sunglasses and making irresponsible plans. It does not erase fear. It does not make procedures fun. It does not turn any of this into a charming adventure. But it does make the day lighter. It makes the system feel less dehumanizing. It reminds me, medicine does not have to lose its humanity just because it has acquired endless paperwork and a talent for scheduling things at the least convenient hour possible. And that is why I wanted to talk about this. Not because I suddenly think every hospital visit is one pleasant receptionist away from becoming magical. Absolutely not. I still know what I know. I still remember what I remember. My skepticism did not retire. It is very much still employed. But when people get it right, that deserves to be said too. We talk about the bad experiences because we need to. Patients need room to tell the truth about what hurts, what fails, what dehumanizes, what lingers afterward. But the good experiences matter too, maybe even more sometimes, because they prove that what patients are asking for is not extravagant. We are not asking for miracles. We are asking for competence with humanity. That is not too much. That is not unreasonable. That is not luxury care, that is care. So yes, I walked into ambulatory surgery for a right heart catheterization, and I left smiling. Not because I have developed a fondness for hospital bracelets or the seductive glamour of compression socks. Let us stay anchored in reality. I smiled because I felt respected, and when you spend enough of your life bracing for indifference, respect can feel almost radical. If you live with chronic illness, you already know exactly what I mean. You know what it feels like when somebody in the system really sees you. Not as a chart, not as a delay, not as a burden, just as a person having a hard day and trying to get through it. That should be ordinary. It still is not. Not everywhere. But the places that get it right deserve to be named or at least appreciated. Because every time kindness shows up in a place that could so easily flatten people into logistics, it pushes back against that coldness a little. It reminds me what healthcare can feel like when nobody forgets there is a human being in the room. And maybe that is what I carried home from this one. Gratitude, yes. Relief, yes. But also, that reminder that small kindnesses are not small. When I am the one on the table, the one in the gown, the one waiting for answers, the one trying not to let fear take over the whole room. Sometimes simple decency changes the whole day. Sometimes it changes what stays with you afterward. And sometimes, against all odds, it sends you home smiling. And that's one of the strange things about living with illness. On paper, it may be called rare, but once it shows up in your body, your lungs, or your heart, it stops feeling rare pretty quickly. Sarcoidosis is only rare until you're the one living with it. I'm Tate, and this is Thoughts While Surviving Chronic Illness. Thanks for being here. If you want to send a short message, there's a text link in the show notes, and I can read and reply there, even though only the last digits of your number are visible to me. For longer messages, stories, or thoughts you want to share, head over to the website. And if you'd like to do something tangible to help people living with sarcoidosis, please consider making a donation to the Foundation for Sarkoidosis Research, or FSR, at stoptarcoidosis.com. I'll also put a link in the show notes. And if you enjoyed this podcast, please rate, review, and share it. New episodes drop every Tuesday and Friday. So until next time, stay safe, be happy, and most of all, keep breathing.