Hospital Adventures

I have come to love paintings by ©Simon Dewey and ©Greg Olsen. They look so real at times that for a moment I get carried away to a different time, especially during times of uncertainty. It sure is nice to be home again. For the past couple of weeks I have had chest pains off and on up near my left shoulder. Since it was a little odd I had a friend take me to ER to check on it, not realizing they assume the worst until they can rule it out. During those two weeks, I worked from home while the doctors figured it out. After three trips to emergency, they finally admitted me this past Friday night for tests and by Sunday they were able to rule out the worst three: heart, blockage, and clots. My PCP is helping me figure out what to look at next. Its all good and I will be back to work tomorrow. No worries!


In the midst of all this I made several friends at Banner Desert. One was a new ER nurse named Melissa who was waiting for her results to be an RN. I have no doubt she made it. She had the nursing part down real good and took good care of me. But you know what, some folks get to see your bad side, she saw the worse side of me. Enough said... Since she was new she had another RN she partnered with. Once I got a room at midnight, they took me for a joyride on the gurney from ER to 3D. Along the way we played 'chicken' with Matt who was coming toward us with a wheelchair. Melissa told him "I've got nothing to loose!". Easy for her to say...I was in front of her. On the way, the hall came to a T. They pointed out that to the left was the women's ward and mine was on the right. They offered to take me by and pickup some 'chicks' but I politely declined. I thought the oxygen tube would be a bit of a turnoff anyways...they delivered me and disappeared into the night. That was fun! Next came Debbie, who started in the morning. Wow! Talk about bedside manners. She is what you would expect a nurse to be--part mom, part friend, sprinkled with some sunshine. She just chuckled when I complimented her. At this point I was very impressed with the caring of the staff that I started keeping track of names. Next was Mitch, who transported me down to radiology for a photo shoot (can you imagine?). He was working toward getting in to the nursing program. For now he was doing this for work and experience. His grandfather is a robotics engineer for HP. He was actually courted by several companies but settled with this offer. Mitch didn't seem a whit behind. Sharp fellow and very pleasant to talk with. Who cares if he only delivered me to one of the two departments? They still came to my bedside to zap me. In the evening came Wendy who helped me to get the names of some of the other staff that helped me. She didn't even bat an eyelash when I asked the favor. She got that done through the night and was nice enough to let me sleep through the night and left me a note in the morning. There were several others like Matt who helped in the waiting room, Norma my Puerto Rican nurse who eats laulau, Paul, Dr. Richie and Valentina. If I had to be away from home a bit, I couldn't have had better company.