Hospitals and Smells

Hospitals and Smells

 Here’s something I’ve been dying to get off my chest – I hate hospitals! Yes, I know a lot of folks feel the same way but me, who when a kid, once dreamed of being a doctor to feel this way! Shocker! But not really because with time and as kids grow, dreams change.

Most of the time, they do anyway.

I know mine did.

What’s the deal with hospitals being painted white or another equally unimaginative color? No, I love white – just not on a wall and certainly not unaccompanied by a splash or many of other livelier, brighter colors.

The inside of my dream house, I tell you, every room would be painted in the warmest, most pleasant shades of every color in the rainbow.

A positive, optimistic vibe, to life!

Now, do you not think that someone who is ill could feel much, much better if she or he were surrounded by walls that convey cheer and the feeling that her or his health would soon be restored to the fullest?

Or if not that, then at least that the person and those loved ones, if any, could be surrounded by hope until it all fades away when the ill one passes on?

Why are ‘get well’ cards colorful? And why do they come in varied sizes? And those cards that come with words printed inside them, why are those words heartwarming and filled with negative – free sentiments?

Oh, if they do not come with such words printed on them, then why is it that we scribble all thoughts positive on the blank spaces inside the cards?

So many questions and just one answer: to bring a smile, hope and cheerfulness to someone who is in much need of it, to try and make the person forget her or his not being well, if only for a few moments.

If ‘get well’ cards can do that, imagine what soothing colored walls, with every color’s shade of the rainbow could do!

How many folks will then not like the hospital, I wonder! Of course, there is just this one other issue, one of many I must say. But let me talk just about this one now.

The atrocious smell of disinfectants! And dirty floors, horrendous cafeteria  food, walls that look like they have been taken from a horror flick (and badly painted over in white!) but let’s leave these issues for another time maybe – or is it too late???

We have room sprays, eco friendly room sprays most of the time I may add, to spray our homes’ interiors – different scents and all delightful!

Wouldn’t it be really something if the whiff of a disinfectant while in a hospital – whether as a patient or a visitor, made one think of freshly baked chocolate cookies or one’s favorite jelly sweet or just about anything of one’s liking, except the disinfectant smelling like itself?

Ah my friends, my dream hospital presented to you!

Imagination getting the better of me, you think? Maybe! But hey, I have the right to express my thoughts!

Colors and scents play an important role in everyday healthy lives – it only makes sense that it will play an even more important one in the everyday of the not-so-healthy, hospital bound lives.

How many of you agree?