JUST TALKED TO THE INSTAWIFE: I reclaimed the Insta-daughter from my sister, who had kept her for the past couple of nights, and we went shopping (Abercrombie!) and out to dinner (sushi!), both her choices of activities. We had a nice evening, while Helen entertained visitors from her family and mine.

We just spoke on the phone today and she sounded good — except that the hospital routine is wearing her down with the constant sleep interruptions. They really do come in every couple of hours, and while some of the stuff makes some sense, I guess — like checking temperature or even EKG — they came in yesterday, and today, at about 5 AM to check her weight. Er, why not a couple of hours later?

The people at the hospital are very nice, but this leads me to wonder what would happen if you did the equivalent of those mental-hospital experiments, where normal grad students tested out as crazy after 6 weeks in a mental hospital. If you took 100 healthy people, then put them in a hospital for 2 weeks of this sort of thing and tested them again, I’ll bet that they’d be significantly worse off. People joke about the sleep interruptions, or about the bad food, but it’s really no joke when you’re in there for a while. I wonder why they don’t do better?