When San Diegan Merry Maisel's 92-year-old mother entered the hospital after a fall in 2002, she was put in an intensive care unit overflow unit with six other patients. There were heart monitors beeping, TVs on and loud chatter from the nurses' station. Maisel believes that noisy hospital visit started her mother's downward spiral. "She would jerk at each noise. She would shudder," Maisel said. "She must have felt it as an attack." Maisel's mother died six weeks later, from complications stemming from the fall. Noise in hospitals has been a problem for decades.
