Do I tell about the stent or the toilet?

Just home from a command visit to St Luke's hospital, I am happy to be writing again. Happy to be.

During my brief stay I met Kristi, Seth, Sandi, Krystal, Megan, Radka, Kim, Nick, Karla, Charlie, and Dr Duerr. All were more or less involved in my care.

Dr Duerr, a cardiologist, put a stent in one of the arteries supplying blood to my heart. His reputation at the hospital is almost more sparkling than I can believe. But I hope all they told me is true, hope the procedure he performed on that 99% closed artery reflects his reputed technical skill. Hope I live another many years.

The others I name here were technicians who came into my room to take blood (no easy task for them, and not pain-free for me of the tiny veins). Some came in to fill up the pill drawer--I now have to take six pills a day, some for life, a couple for a year. Not my choice for the days ahead, but I'll do it because Duerr says it will keep my heart healthy. Keep me alive.

Most of the people I met were nurses, male and female, who popped in to take my vitals or help me in some way.

Now this part.
One's need to use a toilet is a constant, or at least we hope so. Elimination of body waste is helpful to our health. My first 15 hours in the hospital required the use--my use--of a bed pan. You know what that is. It's what a nurse places under your bottom area while you are lying in bed and afterward stands by while you do the waste eliminating.

The whole process isn't pleasant at best, but when you are not permitted to move your right leg at all for nine hours, it's also difficult. Two nurses turned me on my side and one of them placed the bedpan under me. Then they turned me back onto my back. My own part was then what I consider the hardest part, unless removing the bed pan and cleaning up might be the hardest part.

I conclude that the people I met love their work, or they would not do it.

With this hospital visit I saw, and used, the toilet in the cupboard. No kidding.

After a weak objection from me, Seth told me, rather pointedly, that it is a very expensive toilet, costing more than  $2000. I suppose that could be true, but so what? I suppose it was better than the bed pan, certainly more of a conversation piece, being placed, as it was, under the sink in my tiny CCU room on the third floor.

The toilet is built into the door mechanism of the cupboard under the sink. You open the doors and the toilet comes around and locks into a useable position. The black button, which I never saw, flushes; the red lever releases the lock and allows the doors to shut and hide the toilet. One nurse left the toilet out. I asked Paul to put it away. He said he wasn't about to touch the red lever.

Did you want to know all this?

I suppose I should be thankful for the toilet in the cupboard, but I wasn't. I would have walked, if they had permitted me, to the nearest public bathroom on the third floor. They said it was too far anyway.

No. Thankful is what I was when, on Saturday evening, my transfer to 3 Tele came through. In that spacious room I had a regular bathroom, with toilet and sink, separated by a foot or two. No squeezing into the tiny space and sitting under, sort of, the sink.

Good times.