The Big Pink Plastic Water Mugs

I hadn't planned on saying anything about the big pink plastic water mugs, being so insignificant in my overall experience at Ward 3A, but when an idle Google search yielded the exact model of mug used by the hospital, I knew I must share them with you, my gentle readers.

The Thermo Insulated Travel Mug from China Wholesale Town.

Just imagine the mugs in a strange, pinkish-gray color, like if you took a pink shirt and washed it a million times over the course of twenty years, and that's the patient water mug.

About the best example of that pink I can find is this:

Pretty hideous, right? Why pink, of all colors? Blue or gray would make so much more sense. I guess pink was cheaper? I wouldn't be surprised if the hospital buys these mugs in bulk from that very website. With so many patients coming in and out every week, they'd have to buy them wholesale to keep cost down.

Every patient is allowed one of these standard-issue, over-sized mugs for water (or ice water, if you muster up the courage to ask one of the Nurses or Therapists for ice). But the mug is not simply given to you upon your admission. Oh no. You have to ask for the mug, hence why I never got one. I'm incapable of asking people for things out of an irrational fear of being an imposition or inconvenience to others. I just stuck with my Diet Coke bottles.

So I never got a giant pink plastic mug, but I liked looking at everyone else's mugs, because in getting a mug you were required to write your name and room number on the mug with a carefully guarded Sharpie brought out for that purpose and that purpose only. Watching someone sip on their water through the huge straw, I was able to see the extremely personal detail that is how a patient writes his or her name.

Patient L's name was done in a large, gangly scrawl, the "L" looping wildly with reckless abandon. Patient S's name was a delicate cursive, slightly slanted upwards toward the end. Patient Na's name was in clear, direct block print, unmistakably legible. On Patient K's mug, the tittle of the lone "i" was replaced by a heart.

In an environment filled with identical hospital gowns and impersonal identification wristbands, it was nice to see a little self-expression and individuality. In those moments, I could believe that these patients were real people.

Those mugs were damn ugly, though.