Bed Number Ten Analysis

I think the overall theme of Bed Number Ten is to uncover the truth behind what can and really does happen today in the hospital setting as well as long term care units. Most of the time care givers in general underestimate the significance of caring of other human beings. I’ve seen it happen first hand; sometimes people treat patients as a room number, and forget they’re people. I think it was portrayed in both a negative and positive manner. You see her talk about how she felt ignored because staff members would come in and give bedside report, and yet not acknowledge her presence. You’d also see doctor’s uneducated about Guillain-Barre syndrome. She’d even have to get a few labs drawn again, and have to take duplicate x-rays because the staff didn’t communicate well with each other. But you did see her talk highly about a few staff members. What stuck out to me is when she was so happy when a nurse let her husband Bill read a paragraph out of a medical book about Guillain-Barre syndrome since he didn’t know much about it at a doctor’s office. She also talked about a therapist named Ginnie who went above and beyond when it came to the care of Sue. Ginnie even came in on Sundays, which was her day off …show more content…
In the beginning his reaction made me believe that he wasn’t going to handle her sickness very well. When he could only see her for a short period of time when she first went to the ICU, you could tell he had no idea what to do. But something just clicked in Bill, and throughout the whole book he was such an attentive, caring, strong husband. He handled all the finances, visited her even twice a day sometimes, and basically became a full time single parent to their two daughters while Sue was in the hospital. At the end of the book I could understand why Sue clung onto Bill her first few days in the hospital before he left because he is one great guy. He definitely went the extra mile when it came to his wife’s health