Have you ever been to a big-city hospital on an in-patient basis? Did you feel as if you left your dignity at the front door?

I just returned from a major metropolitan hospital. I went there with the diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, but returned with diagnoses of Parkinson’s and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The operation I was to have had to be aborted, so I wound up in an intensive care unit where the fun began.

I was probed and prodded hundreds of times by anyone who came near me, usually to check my “vital signs.” Downstairs after a stress test, my vital signs were taken just before I went upstairs to my room to have my vital signs checked again five minutes later.

Then there is the issue of toilet behavior. Despite my plea to hurry there was a time when I did what I haven’t done since I was an infant.

Of course, I couldn’t use a commode in privacy; someone had to watch me, and all my toilet behaviors to make sure I didn’t fall off and hurt myself. Even though I was ambulatory, only a physical therapist or occupational therapist could determine this, and that would be an extra $200 to $300, thank you very much.

In the ICU, I was literally tied to my chair or bed so I didn’t wander off, fall and break my neck. I suspect these rules were written more by a team of lawyers concerned not with protecting me but with protecting the hospital against a lawsuit.

The best part is when I was awakened every hour to see if I was sleeping well! Getting a good night’s sleep, by the way, will have to occur when you finally get home in a catatonic, exhausted state.

And the cost of all this? Don’t ask. Nobody knew or would tell me for fear I would have a fatal heart attack. Or maybe they were ashamed of the cost.

The standard line about cost or coverage is, “Don’t worry — just get well — your insurance will cover your bill.” Meanwhile, health insurance is getting costlier and costlier and becoming beyond the reach of many Americans.

Why not just leave, you may well ask? The answer is they had me trapped. If I left against medical advice, guess who would have refused to pay any of my bills, which by now seemed to be approaching the national debt.

J. Bailey Molineux is a psychologist with Adult and Child Counseling, and can be reached at 443-1990.