My husband, Dr. T. Stacy Lloyd Jr. just came home last night from a two day hospital stay. He went crashing into a bedroom door at about 5:30 AM several mornings ago, and said he felt dizzy.

I took his blood pressure and it was very weird 190/90 and his normal BP is 110/70. And his pulse didn’t seem to have a normal rhythm. After calling a family member and the hospital triage nurse, it was decided he should go to the hospital. The rescue squad was called when he was too shaky to make it down the stairs.

At the hospital, because of his heart attack history in May, they were checking for a heart attack and what caused this syncope. After a bunch of tests, the conclusion was only speculative: mild dehydration. They even checked his carotids with an ultrasound and an echo cardiogram. But this landed us in the hospital for two days of hell.

I say hell because this time the nurse on day duty for 12 hours for two days was about the worst nurse I had ever encountered. She wanted to give him his daily aspirin without me having the results of a brain CAT scan. She must have been delusional for me to consent to that. I guess her passive aggressive behavior for two days was a result of a power struggle. She had me labeled as a trouble maker, which is farthest from the truth. I have a nursing background and know protocol and nurse’s positions. I was being the patient advocate I should be.

Many times in my writings I have commented never leave a patient alone in the hospital. Someone needs to monitor everything including every drug given. I do practically everything for my husband when he is in there. So the nurse basically had to give him 3 pills and make phone calls to expedite his tests and release.

And then we come to the food. It is virtually impossible for a type O such as my husband to get adequate nutrition in a hospital especially when they label you a cardiac patient.

I asked for eggs for him for breakfast. There is a menu in the room, and you have to order your own food. The answer to that question is “it isn’t egg day.” So a frank n food egg it was. They didn’t hesitate to put the cheese in it though.

The luncheon menu left little choice except a tuna fish sandwich both days.

Now dinner is the real challenge. There are no decent fresh vegetables on the menu. The only thing I could think of was turkey which didn’t look like real meat either. Yesterday night Stacy ordered some lasagna. By that time I had given up on the food. But what really fascinated me was the health shake. Here are some of the ingredients: milk, corn syrup, water, high fructose corn syrup , whey protein, corn oil with BHA and BHT malodextrin natural and artificial color calcium phosphate, trebasic, sodium hexametaphospate. mono and diglycerides, titanium dioxide Color (xanthan gum, ascorbic acid magnesium oxide carageeenan red dye 3, salt ferric orthophosphate alpha tocopheral acetate and it goes on and on.



4 g fat

17 g sugar

6 gram protein

total carbs 35g

In anyone’s wildest nutritional plan, I would like someone to tell me how the heck this could be called a health shake? Full of bad sugar, bad fat, and very little protein on top of a bundle of preservatives, this shake is enough to make someone sick. And it looked terrible too (an artificial strawberry looking gook.)

I told my husband not to drink it, but let me take home the carton for proof of the health food in hospitals.

If I hadn’t been under so much distress from the nurse, and one of my children had been there, I could have gone out and gotten him some decent food. But this time I was all alone, except for a friend who spent the night with him.

The hospital called this morning to ask how the stay was, and I was still so upset by our treatment, I forgot to mention the food. However, apparently the hospital is going to follow up on this, and then I’ll at least put in my two cents about the hospital nutrition.

My cousin wondered what happens to patients who don’t have someone to help them order. I guess the nurse would help. Who knows?

Another problem was my food in the hospital I basically lived on the A bars, but I had to have something else and consented to a turkey breast sandwich one night and a tuna fish sandwich the next night that made me gag.

Anyway, we are back home and back to eating an A and O diet. I made Stacy two poached eggs for breakfast, and for myself an A powder mixture with soymilk and pineapple and cod liver oil. He usually eats a type O shake but wanted eggs today. My advice for person of any blood type in the hospital, have your own food brought in if possible. Take some blood type bars and organic fruit with you with some blood type specific nuts. And then just pray you don’t have to stay too long.