hospital time

as you may know, my husband checked into the emergency room around 3am yesterday. his appendix ruptured and he needed surgery to get the infected appendix out and to clean up his abdomen--this procedure didn't happen until 6:15pm yesterday...this is something i like to call "hospital time." see, hospitals don't operate on normal people time..."they're taking him up in a few minutes" could be anywhere from 2 minutes (actually a few minutes) to 6 hours (not a few minutes. in fact, this is more than a few hours).

so, i've been thinking about what the hospital time equation might look like. i think it goes something like this:

size of doctor's ego (always huge) + pain^2 X actual time elapsed = hospital time

the surgery went well and we'll be going home in a few days. hospital time will continue to occur (like today when the doctor was coming in the morning...no, check that he's coming at 4...no, wait, he showed up at 5:30, took a call in the middle of the consult, cracked inapprop jokes and left).

have you ever had to live on hospital time? and how does one get back to miller time?