10 things men hate about hospitals

A man lying in a hospital bed. (Courtesy/iStockphoto)

Every wife knows there is nothing more irritating than nursing a sick man, and that nothing is more difficult than dragging the same rascal to hospital. Men loath hospitals and are often dragged to the sick bay over their dead bodies. Here is why:

1.No alcohol

You know that Friday afternoon when 13 crisp banknotes are laying eggs in your wallet and Monday is a public holiday? You develop a silly cough and the doctor orders you to open your mouth, scribbles mumbo jumbo on a piece of paper and declares “no alcohol for 12 days.” Yesu Kristo!

2. Kutembea uchi

Doctors believe that our clothes crawl with vermin. So, when you get admitted, the hospital Gestapo immediately confiscates your cool threads and give you a silly green coloured dress which must be worn back to front. So, for one long week,  you have to sit properly like a woman and suffer the indignity of dangling around without underwear.

3. Boiled cabbages

When you fall sick, saliva tastes like those herbs that akala-sporting Maasai ‘doctors’ sell in pubs with a kibuyu. What is needed is sweet food – choma, soup, mutura, cold soda, soggy fries and nicely fried chicken dripping with oil. But what do hospitals prescribe? ‘Healthy food’ comprising of steamed vegetables, carrots, salt-less goo and water.

4. Nurse manenos

The pretty nurse will always be preoccupied with the drooling 102-year-old geezer who can’t remember his gender. But the day you have a nasty boil on your backside, have kisonono or wear those stained, orange coloured briefs with a hole or two for aeration that your ex gifted you ten Valentines ago, the nurse who steps forward will be a replica of Angelina Jolie. Or Halle Berry look-a-like.

5. Bend over please...

The gay community have a different standard, but the rest of the male population is used to garbage exiting from the cloaca, not stuff getting in. Let it, therefore, be said without fear of contradiction that doctors should stop their nasty jokes and establish a different method for checking our prostates. Subjecting heterosexual men to anal exams is unconstitutional. Ask Njuri Ncheke.

6. You are fat!

What is it with doctors ordering us to be weighed when our potbellies eloquently communicate that we love meat, hate exercise and are blissfully obese? We know we are fat, doctor. Our wives remind us that every morning after feigning headaches the previous night. Don’t rub it in. And please, it is in bad taste to allege that we have minyoo.

7. Do you drink?

Doc, it is enough to ask a man whether he drinks. Don’t ask how many bottles per week because we will lie and you know it. Per week? This is Kenya, daktari, not Europe where ‘sat-on’ men sip one watery beer for hours after eating leaves, half a tomato and biscuits for dinner.

8. This won’t hurt

Of course everything in hospital (especially injections) hurts like hell. And where did you guys get this Satanic idea of sticking plastic tubes in the urethra? A catheter hurts going in and coming out. Besides, sneaking to the parking lot for a puff with a bag of urine hidden in the pocket of your green hospital gown is torture.

9. Staring death in the eye

I know priests mean well. But when they pop into hospital wards to pray for the sick, we hear ghosts and spirits when they mention Holy Ghost and Holy Spirit. The message they convey is that things are so thick that doctors are helpless and that they (priests) are therefore begging Jehovah to ignore our sins and give us a soft landing at the pearly gates. The sadists who sell coffins at hospital gates don’t help either, especially when that evil neighbour with whom you have a land feud pays you a visit in hospital and asks, “Si ni ugonjwa tu kama hii ndio iliua Njoro wa butchery?”

10. Shit in a bottle

Finally, doctors, that stool test of yours...Riswa! You walk in complaining of a backache and a medic orders a stool test. How? There is nothing more dehumanising than collecting your own dung, stuffing it in a microscopic bottle and handing it to a cute, sexy lab technician. Poo!