Rhonda and Ernie called to check on me, so did Alba from accounts payable. This type of genuine concern is very new to me. It was one boring day in one boring hospital. They have no distractions for the patients except one television for every two people. Seems to me I would want my patients completely distracted when they were recovering. No magazines, no newspapers. Actually, I found out there was a gift shop and went AWOL. They caught me, but I smuggled in a Good Housekeeping and a Newsweek.
This is the view down the hallway from my room. That's once I got out of intensive care, so now I can scratch where it itches. I recovered quickly enough to make it into the pharmacy downstairs to buy decent magazines, such as were available.
Later, I was given the okay to visit the gift shop, and acquired a Tom Clancy novel, “Sea of Fire”, which was pretty much like every other Tom Clancy novel. The police always get their guy even if they use blackmail to do it. As usual, Clancy is technically correct about everything, but never explains how all those people get to the right time and place without being named Ivanhoe. (That's a dig at Ivanhoe because in that book people are continually running into each other in the middle of nowhere.)
Be careful whenever you get asked a non-medical question at Mt. Sinai. It means they are up to something. While I was drugged, I must have given some answers in Spanish. Next day, my new roommate is Spanish-speaking along with all 24 of his relations who traipse in and out all day long and need the TV far worse than I. Still, I see the hospital point. Who else was there to explain to that man that the alarm was only a fire drill? Or tell the staff that he wants to sit up higher on the bed?
The hospital is well enough as long as you keep an eye on what’s going on. Every time my location was switched, I missed the meal. Every time, wink, nudge. That's not clear but let me explain every time they had to take my blood pressure were or anything like that they would insist I get in a wheelchair and take me to another room and then bring me back. It took me a while to catch on that this invariably happened at meal time so they could skip serving me a mail. I began to notice that Mount Sinai had dozens of deliberate policies like this to save them their nickels and dimes.
Which reminds me, last Sunday I was supposed to get my $100 deposit back on the tent. Dang! The tent people pulled the same one on my agent as they did on me. On the phone, the price is $300, but by the time you get over there, it grows to $500. I didn't get a chance to explain this before but this Spanish guy said he had some connections and could get me a tent suitable for my needs. When I showed up the people who'd been so agreeable on the phone said they “misunderstood” that I was going to set the tent up outside. I have no idea where else they thought I would be setting up a tent.
Suddenly the model they quoted me for $300 would, "Blow away in the wind." I pointed at big exhibits nearby and asked them if what they said was true, then why was the flea market still there? You know that look Florida people get on their face when they've just been hit with some facts? I refer to them as the "blank-stupids". Anyway, I lost my hundred dollar deposit because I was hanging around here.
From my Quotes I Like Department: “Often wrong, but never in doubt.” The motto attributed to the Miami Police Department, the ones who like to kick in the wrong door and arrest the wrong people.
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