Thwarting Murphy: 8 Humorous Ways to Avoid Hospitalizations

We all know that hospitalizations seem to happen at the worst possible times. In order to prevent these hospitalizations, we offer the following list of 10 things you can do that will help you avoid virtually any hospitalization.

1. Never schedule a date night or vacation. Have you noticed that hospitalizations only occur when you have scheduled something really important and unusual, like a date night or vacation? Yeah, just stop scheduling those. They are like beacons on your calendar that scream, “hospital.”

2. Always pack a bag. Whenever you go to an appointment, pretend your child will be admitted and pack your bags. As long as you have your bags with you, you will for sure avoid getting admitted. If you want to be extra sure you will not be admitted, keep the bag packed and ready at all times, preferably in the car or van.

3. Always have clean underwear available at all times for every member of your family. Hospitalizations only occur when a member of your family runs out of clean underwear. Just as long as you have clean underwear for everybody, you will be just fine at home. The minute that all your underwear is crusty and too disgusting to see the light of day will be the minute you need to go to the hospital.

4. Hit menopause or take the pill all the time. Hospitalizations only happen during your period. The only way to avoid them is to get rid of your monthly friend. Period.

5. Always catch up on your sleep. Hospitalizations only occur when you haven’t slept for three days and are too incoherent to provide a decent medical history. As long as you are caught up on sleep, you will never have to go to the hospital. Note: virtually no one is able to follow this particular guideline.

6. Know your doctor’s off-day and vacation schedule. Children only get sick when their doctors are out-of-town, on vacation, or out-of-work for some reason. If you know the schedule of your child’s doctor, you can create a back-up doctor plan, thereby preventing a hospitalization!

7. Never throw away any piece of equipment or the random supplies the home health agency accidentally stuck in your delivery. As soon as you throw something away, that will be the one and only item you need to prevent your child from being hospitalized. Yes, your friends may start calling you a hoarder, but when your baby suddenly starts wheezing and you have four neb masks in three different sizes, you will be ever so thankful that you became an official medical supply hoarder.

8. Move to Uruguay. Is it snowing? A hurricane? An earthquake? Tidal wave? Volcanic eruption? Wildfire? Not if you are in Uruguay, which Business Insider ranked as the country with the least natural disasters. Hospitalizations are only needed during bad weather or natural disasters. In order to prevent them, you must move to Uruguay. Of course, we are not even sure Uruguay has a pediatric academic medical center, but you probably won’t need it anyway after following all the suggestions in this article.