It is Sunday, January 10 and there are only 76 days until Easter.  Time to eat last year’s peeps so you can make room for this year’s.    Today we remember the birthdays of Gasparo Visconti, George Washington Carver and Sal Mineo.  On this day in 49 BC Julius Cesar crossed the Rubicon and invaded Italy, in 1776 “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine was published and in 1910 the Lunt-Fontanne Theater opened at 205 W 46^th St, NYC.  In Switzerland it is the Meitlisunntig Festival.

I hope your new year is going well for you.  Quick show of hands – how many of you have already broken your resolutions for this year?  Our year has not started out too well.  The lovely Elaine is currently in the hospital.  I will not go into the details, but let me say that she is holding up as well as can be expected.  I did not; however, mention this to garner sympathy.  I brought it up as a means of discussing hospitals, in general.  I have gone on and on with this topic in the past, but feel like revisiting it again.

The first thing I wanted to mention is the parking garage at the hospital.  There are several things that I want to bring up.  One is that the parking is free!  I know!  Whoever heard of that?  The reason for that is that a local car dealership supports the garage and gives the parking away for free.  Even better, if you buy a car or truck from the family of dealerships and present your garage ticket, they will donate $100 to the Healthcare Foundation connected to the hospital.  I was amazed when I first saw this.  I almost wanted to go buy a car from them, but the lovely Elaine said I had just gotten a new car a couple months ago and could not get another one.

Moving on, I noticed something this time, in the garage, that I had not seen during our last foray in to the hospital.  They have a speed limit posted.  I agree with posting a speed limit sign even though we all know that no one ever obeys the limit.  We also know, or figure out rather quickly, that there is generally no one in the garage to enforce the limit.  The reason I even bring this up is because of the limit itself.  The posted speed limit for the parking garage is 12 MPH.  I could understand if you set it at 10 or 15, because you could look at your speedometer and see how much over the limit you were.  When it is set at 12, there is really no way to know if you are doing the limit.  We all know that anyone over 75 actually tries to obey any posted rule, so they will do their best to only go 12 MPH.  Unfortunately, most speedometers are done in increments of 5, so anyone trying to follow the rule will have a difficult time.  All I can say is try not to get stuck behind one of those older seniors.

I know I have mentioned it before, but I feel like I want to briefly bring it up again.  Here is the picture – it is 5 AM and we are sitting in the examining room in the ER.  We have given the admitting nurse the reason why we are there.  Why is it that when the doctor comes in he always says, “So how are you doing today?”  Did you not read the chart before coming in?  You should already know how the person is doing today.  I always want to reply, “I’m fine.  I just like going to the hospital very early in the morning and thought this would be a good day to do it.”  The lovely Elaine always gives me the look right after the doctor says that and just before I have a chance to respond.  One of these days, though …

Another amazing thing that we have experienced, at least so far, is that there is no yeller this time.  Over the years, we have spent a lot of time in hospitals.  Between my visits, the lovely Elaine’s, my parents and her parents, we have logged a considerable number of hours in those facilities.  Each time, there was always at least one person who spent a fair amount of time yelling for something.  There was one guy who kept yelling for Gloria.  We never did find out who Gloria was, but she was apparently someone that he really needed.  When he wasn’t yelling for her, he was calling out that he needed help because “I got the diarrhea in here!”

We have heard people calling out for a nurse because they needed help, because they were hungry, they wanted to leave or they wanted to get up.  The person that wanted to get up was told by a nurse that she couldn’t get up because she had a broken leg and had to keep it in a sling.  We have heard things like, “Can someone come help me?  I need help.  Can someone please come help me?”  When asked by a nurse what she needed help with her reply was simply, “I just need help.”  We have heard people complain about having to go to the bathroom, wanting to change beds, needing to get something else to eat because they did not like what they had ordered, needing more blankets, less blankets and on and on.  I think that if some of the people who have become nurses had spent any amount of time on a regular hospital floor, they might have made a career change.

This week our fact tells us that by raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you cannot sink into quicksand.  Of course if you are lying on your back, with your legs raised, you cannot move to get of quicksand, either.  My advice would be to simply stay out of quicksand.

So, as I said, the lovely Elaine is in the hospital and we are hoping for a rapid, good resolution to her affliction.  If you get a chance, please say a quick prayer for her.  Thank you.