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Actually Hospital A does have another bit of relevance. Which might apply to Hospital B as well. You see, Hospital A is located in a small city of about
30,000. Not far away is a considerably larger city. It has several hospitals, two large ones and a smaller one. Calling the smaller one a hospital
is a bit of a stretch as we shall see. In any case Hospital A sent me to Hospital B. Why they did so is a mystery. Just kidding.
Not a great picture but you get the idea. The distance from Hospital A to Hospital X is about 20 miles. It's almost entirely along a four-lane divided highway with
relatively light traffic most of the time. The travel time is guesstimated at 33 minutes in normal traffic, an ambulance with traffic moving out of the way can do it
in less. Hospital B is only about five miles further but is in an old part of the city and those miles are on narrow and congested streets. Moving a patient
from ambulance to emergency room is also takes longer at that hospital.
Hospital X is a larger and newer hospital, with more of everything Hospital B has except, maybe, cancer treatment. Hospital X is part of a larger hospital system in a
larger city nearby and thus has those resources available. It also has a much better reputation among the locals. What would have happened if the ambulance had stopped at Hospital
X instead of going to Hospital B, and why was Hospital B chosen? The right turn to the emergency room a couple of hundred yards away was the road not taken.
The identity of the hospitals is not hard for anyone familiar with the area to figure out, and if anyone cares to respond I'm sure someone will have an explanation. There's
always an explanation. Some people have an answer for everything. Actually I've heard enough from people in the know not to care what it is.
In any case Hospital B is not the subject here. As far as I can determine they did their work reasonably well, and the accounts given by friends and family suggest that they did.
Except for one thing.
The doctor decided that I needed bypass surgery, which seems to be a common thing these days. It seems to have been satisfactorily done as I have no problems with my heart now. On my last
visit to the cardiologist he seemed to think all was well. For reasons unknown to me a day after the surgery I again experienced cardiac arrest, and on this occasion not only was my heart
not doing what it is supposed to but I stopped breathing. Twelve minutes later they had accomplished a tracheostomy, but not before someone called my two siblings who have left the
hospital to attend church, believing I was not in serious danger.
"We've lost him," the caller said. To give the benefit of doubt perhaps whoever it was didn't mean to imply that I had expired, but maybe they should have waited until it was official.
I don't know if it was the same person who later told them I was likely to be a vegetable, if not there were two irresponsible people there. To be fair the doctor, when told of this,
said that the person was out of line (you think?) but apparently expectations were low to say the least.
Whenever I became marginally conscious I was in great pain, apparently from the dye. Remember the dye? Now I'm presumed brain-dead and with dysfunctional kidneys.
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