Tea Time with Jo | Hospital Stay Survival Guide

As a follow up to my post “Plea to Hospital Workers”, I wanted to share the things that I did to maintain my sanity while I stayed in the hospital for a week and a half, advocating for my loved one. I hope you will find these tips helpful. Let's get to it...

Essential Oils

This was one of the first things I packed when I knew we were headed to the ER (even before I knew that it would become a long hospital stay). Essential oils have many benefits including fighting germs and helping to relax the nervous system. I was regularly applying oils to my loved one and myself every few hours. While I can’t say with 100% certainty that essential oils were the reason, both my loved one and I managed to go through the experience and avoid contracting upper respiratory infections (whoop whoop). It also became a talking point amongst the nurses, doctors and allied professionals that came into the room. Everyone commented on how good the room smelled. After a few nights, our room gained notoriety as “the room that smells good”. Most people thought we were actively diffusing oils in the room so it's amazing that just a couple of drops placed on our bodies was having that kind of effect. The 3 oils I used the most were Tea Tree Oil, Alpine Lavender Oil and Young Living’s Purification. All of these are germ fighters but I would use the Purification oil blended with Tea Tree in the daylight hours and the Lavender oil blended with Tea Tree in the nighttime hours to help promote rest and relaxation.

Blue Light Glasses & Eye Mask

The hospital environment is so NOT conducive to quality sleep. Between the constant beeps of all the machines, the checking in of nurses and allied professionals and the bright lights of the various monitors/screens, sleep seems elusive in this setting.

One thing that truly brought relief to my eyes and helped me feel sleepy at the appropriate time was blue light blocking glasses. I didn’t have these for the first couple of days (because it didn’t occur to me to pack them) but I felt so much relief on my eyeballs when I started to use them in the hospital. I could feel my eyes relax even though I hadn’t even become aware that they were strained. I also started to yawn and feel my sleepiness come on around 9pm, which is more normal for me. When I didn’t have my blue light blockers, I was so stimulated that I wouldn’t feel sleepy until sometime between midnight and 1am. 

The particular hospital my loved one and I were at offered a “sleep kit” which contained an eye mask and ear plugs. The eye mask in our kit was so tight, there is no way it was meant for adults. I often joke that I have a pea-sized head and this eye mask was tight on me. Using my own eye mask was extremely helpful. If it accidentally fell on the floor though, it was treated like “the floor is lava” and a fresh pair had to be used until the original pair could be washed. 

While I can see how ear plugs would be helpful, my ears in particular, don’t like ear plugs. Since I was in the hospital as a support person/advocate, I also wanted to be aware of when a provider was coming into the room and interacting with my loved one. You would be surprised the kind of important information they want to discuss with you at 4am when you are sleep deprived and disoriented. It isn’t the best conditions for a patient to truly provide informed consent so I wanted to be roused awake when someone came into the room. 

Regular Meals and Hydration

The hospital meal service can really throw you off your eating schedule. For whatever reason, breakfast was served before 7:30am, lunch was served around 11:30am and dinner was served around 5pm. In addition to the fact that the meals are so incredibly unbalanced and insanely high in processed foods, the eating windows were not conducive to proper digestion. Never mind the fact that it appears that one of the ladies in charge of bringing the meals had it out for me and always gave me a hard time about about providing my “guest meal”. Taking it upon yourself to maintain good nutrition while staying at a hospital is so helpful for maintaining your own immune health and energy. Once I realized I couldn’t rely on the “nutrition” department to bring me my meals, and that the options in the cafeteria were not very good, I made sure to stock up on healthy snacks and good quality water. I was very fortunate to have my sister making meals for me for most of that time and I would supplement those with near by restaurants when needed. Making sure that the patient’s needs are met is priority, but you can’t properly advocate if your blood sugar is all kinds of crazy and you can’t think clearly. I did my best to make sure I was getting regular meals and snacking in between if I needed to. 

I also made sure to pack my drinking salts so that I could support my body with electrolytes (during stress, your adrenals burn through those for fuel). 

Supplements to The Rescue

Often times, when things are going haywire, people abandon their supplement routine. This is counterintuitive as it is when you need supplements the most. Just as their name implies, supplements are there to supplement our needs when we can’t get them all through food. Since a hospital setting is not ideal for optimum nutrition, supplements can be extremely helpful in filling in those nutrition gaps. I happened to be out of many of my supplements when all this went down but I had liver capsules and liposmal vitamin C so I packed a little pill organizer and took those with me once I realized the hospital stay would be a long one. Liver supplements are very nutritious and act almost like a multivitamin. Liposomal Vitamin C absorbs better, is helpful for the adrenals (which are working overdrive to mitigate stress) and the immune system. 

Journaling and Reading

Processing everything that was happening was quite the challenge. I wanted to hold it together in front of my loved one, even though I was falling apart during the first few days when they first got their diagnosis and when they were undergoing a surgical procedure with a decent amount of risk. I gave myself the freedom to cry on my drives to and from the hospital as I needed to. One of my biggest cry sessions was in the hospital bathroom after my loved one was taken for a preliminary check prior to their surgery.

When I didn’t feel at liberty to cry, I turned to my journal to write out all my feelings. Journaling always seems to help me process and see things in a new perspective. I’m still not done journaling about the experience but it did bring me some emotional relief to have a place to write down all of my fears, concerns, hopes, etc. rather than expressing them to the patient who was sitting in their own fears and concerns. It didn’t feel fair to put any of the weight of my emotions on the person in the hospital bed but my journal could certainly handle it all without bias or burden. 

Reading was also very helpful. I’m not the most social person. I don’t try to spark conversations with other people in waiting rooms to help pass the time. During those moments of “down time” while I was in the surgical waiting room, I decided to read. My book of choice during this time was “The Seat of the Soul”. While I still haven’t finished it, I made a big dent in the book during the time I was in the hospital. The subject matter of the book helped to distract me and provide me a different perspective which was very helpful. It also helped reconnect me to some of my spiritual beliefs without any religious connotations, which I appreciated. 

Healthy Movement

It can be easy to forget about physical activity when your routine is skewed by all of the changes happening in a hospital setting. Getting some movement it can be helpful for your circulation but also for your sanity. Gentle movement can help with any anxious feelings that often occur when in this type of situation. Luckily, hospitals tend to have long hallways that can be helpful to get some steps in. Occasionally, they may have a courtyard where you can get some sunshine at various points throughout the day. 

If you are able to use the stairs, that would also be a good way to get some movement in. I would take the stairs down to the cafeteria and back up to the room. Occasionally, I would wait until my loved one was in the bathroom to do some light mobility exercises such as arm/shoulder circles, trunk rotations, squats etc. Get creative!  

Reaching Out to Resources

Generally, I’m the one providing info and support for patients but this particular incident was out of my scope of practice. I reached out to a friend who was very knowledgeable in the health issue my loved one was experiencing, and that was the best thing I could’ve ever done. They provided me with so much knowledge and coached me on how to advocate for the patient. I reached out to another friend, who happens to be a nurse, and they also provided me with good information and comfort on what to expect. I felt prepared to ask questions when the doctors would come to visit. I also had a list of questions to ask before the surgical procedures and after, which the doctors were quite impressed with and happy to answer for me. 

I am very fortunate to have a great relationship with my sister and she immediately made herself available to make us meals and help out with my fur baby. My mother in law was also helpful in assisting with the four-legged babies. I had made the decision to post on IG that I would be stepping away from emails/DMs/Communication while I was in the hospital. I was very touched by the number of followers/patients/friends/colleagues that personally reached out to me to offer their help and support. Some even offered financial contributions. All of this was incredibly helpful for me. 

Reaching out is immensely important during these challenging situations. You can’t go at it alone and you don’t have to. You’d be surprised at the support you might get from those around you, even those who don’t know you that well. The idea of not telling other people your struggles so that you don’t burden them is absolute bullshit. People don’t have a crystal ball and I’d argue most aren’t mind readers. They can’t possibly know that you need help if you don’t reach out and say that you do. While you may not want a stranger coming to your house to feed your pets, you never know who might be willing to send you a DoorDash/Uber Eats gift card so you can get some meals/groceries/dog food delivered. They may just offer words of encouragement that bring you peace during this time, or offer you a shoulder to cry on. 

Asking for Help and Receiving it

It’s one thing to ask for help, it’s another to receive it. Most of us have a really hard time receiving help when it is offered to us. Maybe we have several friends or loved ones that have offered to make meals, help with our pets, do our laundry, etc, but we feel guilty about accepting this help. Before you go around finding excuses to “not burden others”, put yourself in the shoes of the person trying to help you. What if one of your friends/loved ones was going through a struggle and you offered to help? You would want them to take you up on the offer if they truly needed the help, right? What if you offered to help with some expenses? If you offered, it’s because you had the funds available to do it. You’d want the person to accept, wouldn’t you? 

You’re in a time of need and it is ok to accept the help and truly accept the help. Set aside the feelings that you somehow need to pay back everyone that has offered to help. Put that energy into paying it forward one day when the time comes. 



If you find yourself in the hospital, having to advocate for a loved one, I hope that you find these tips helpful. It is not selfish to make sure that you are well supported so that you can be a great source of support for the patient. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this post. 

Please share it with anyone that may find it helpful. If you are about to undergo a procedure, you may want to share these tips with those who will be there advocating for you. This way they can be more prepared going into the situation. Whatever the case, I pray for the swift and thorough recovery of the patient as well as the clarity and discernment of the advocate.