#237 Hospital Music

Hospitals are strange places. There are so many different people, each with different reasons for being there. Lives begin and end there. Traumatic things happen there. Mundane things happen there. To the people who work there, it’s just another building. To those who are admitted it can be a safe place, a scary place or both at the same time. To those who are visiting it can be intimidating and confusing.




I have been in many hospitals, in different roles. I work in them as a physician, I have been a patient during the births of my sons, and I have visited loved ones there. I have been at times, bored, scared, annoyed, perplexed and angered by hospitals. Each one has its own culture and its own way of doing things that varies slightly even from one just across the street.



I am on call this weekend and have, so far, been to the hospital three times to do consults on inpatients. Three times today I have heard Brahms lullaby playing over the hospital-wide intercom. This plays every time a baby is born there. I used to think it was a wonderful custom, now I’m not so sure. None of the floors I was on was anywhere near the maternity ward, and two of the patients I saw were battling illnesses that will likely kill them. Is it a comfort or a painful reminder of mortality to have to listen to the lullaby day and night anytime a baby is born?



I think if the hospital where Eric was had done this I would have hated it. I wouldn’t have wanted to think about a family joyous in the face of new life while watching my normally vibrant brother lie way too still. Maybe I’m a bitter person, but I think it is better to let us all mind our own business. Leave me alone in my grief and I won’t disturb your happiness. It’s not that I wouldn’t theoretically be happy for that family, just that I don’t need it rubbed in my face. And I think that’s how it would have felt.



I don’t think the parents of the newborns would feel slighted if the entire hospital wasn’t alerted to the presence of a new life. In fact, I doubt they even notice it, they’re probably too overcome with their own joy and amazement—and they should be. Certainly the newborns aren’t taking notice.



Nobody would even think to play music with every death. I think we should do away with the music for birth as well.