Little.

Having lived in the hospital for almost 6 months now (less than 28 days at home, in no more than 6 day increments) I have to say that I'm still pretty stable emotionally. Of course I have bad days but I haven't broken down yet or suffered large bouts of depression. One of the hardest things to deal with though is the attitude of the nurses and the lack of personal space.

People come in and out of your room - nurses, doctors, phlebotomist and even just random construction workers at times. The room is yours sure, but there are medication times that need to be taken care of, protocol to be followed, lights to fix and it doesn't matter if you feel like seeing people or not. If you're in the middle of crying the cleaning lady still needs to clean the room.

One of the biggest problems I have is the nurses not keeping their emotions to themselves. I have the view that I "live" here and they (don't get me wrong, I love nurses) show up for 8 hours a day. I've had nurses come in and complain that its only "____ more hours until I can go home, yuck!" and I have yet to formulate a response to that. If a nurse is in a bad mood (and it does happen) I'm sure they really try to hold back but if they snap, they can leave the room and then come back whenever they feel like it. I get to feel like I was verbally assaulted and I have nowhere to run. I have no safe place where I can sit and just pretend like nothing happened. I have no place to call my own.