Once again, I have to apologize for the name of this blob: Going on 80. Now that I’m 89, some folks think it should be called Going on 90, but I can’t figure out how to change it on WordPress, and, besides, that wouldn’t be correct either. I’m pretty sure it really should be called Going on 146, but my doctor told me not to tell anyone about it. And to take the pink pill in the morning and the blue one at night.

Most people aren’t going to live forever but I always thought I was. Until recently.

It happened one dark and stormy night. Okay, scratch that part. It happened one pleasant, smoke-filled evening in Seattle about a month ago when I casually visited Urgent Care at my friendly Kaiser Permanente clinic with a minor complaint. I thought I needed a prescription for some water pills.

The next thing I knew, I was captured, strapped on a gurney, rolled into an ambulance and transported under cover of – by then – a dark and stormy night – to the hospital. As if that wasn’t terrorizing enough, I had to worry about the tatty underpants I had on, and why hadn’t I done something about my hair.

What was to happen was a life-changing event and I hold them accountable. I think the hospital proceeded to commit malpractice on me and they’re not going to get away with it. Thanks to Perry Mason re-runs, I know what I have to do. What any patriotic red-blooded American would do: file a class action lawsuit.

While you were sound asleep in bed, or if in, say, Hiawatha, Iowa, out battening down the plywood on the windows in preparation for the Level 9 hurricane which was about to flatten your house, I was at the hospital enjoying some similar activity. And similarly frozen with fear.

I was in a unit called Telemetry. I think it may be where they do testing for GEDs or SAT scores when they’re not busy. A lot of machines and computers and unidentified masked individuals are involved.

I like to imagine being in the hospital some time, and when an X-Ray gets ordered, I could picture myself gracefully laid out on the gurney as George Clooney is frantically propelling it down the hallway yelling, “Get outta the way! This woman needs a CBC, a chest x-ray and a full pelvic exam!”

But, alas, that isn’t what happens at my hospital. “Au contraire!” (A French expression meaning “Hell, no, kiddo.”)

No, indeed. At my hospital, you don’t need to go to Radiology. Radiology will come to YOU. As will the Laboratory, the EKG Department, the Ultra Sound Department, Pharmacy, Dietary, Housekeeping, and the Coroner’s Office wanting to know if you’ve signed the green form yet, and who are your next of kin.

All the machines that were being rolled in and out took up so much room that at one point it appeared the nurse was going to have to roll my bed out into the hall, where at least it probably would have been a little quieter. It was rather difficult to get any sleep that night what with all the beeping and dripping and clicking and sucking sounds to remind me that I was, yes, near death. The attendants might have been able to reassure me that I wasn’t, but I couldn’t hear them over the audio special effects.

I know what you’re thinking. So far, everything was going fine. I was in the hospital. For two days of testing. And I was safe. NOT. At the time, little did I know what was in store.

By the next morning, though, I have to admit that I started really enjoying myself. (I’d rather you don’t mention this part to the lawyers). In fact, I loved it. I’ve never been so pampered. Like a plump Persian cat who’s being gently treated for fleas. And do you know what’s the next best thing to having Breakfast in Bed? It’s having Lunch in Bed. And then having Dinner in Bed. And you don’t even have to do the dishes.

I’ve always heard that hospital food is supposed to taste like dog-doo, but I discovered otherwise. Waking up the first morning, one of the nurses pointed out a long rectangular card at my bedside and told me I’d “Better eat something”. (She didn’t mean the card.) The title on the card had the really unappetizing title of “Low Sodium Diet for Cardiac Patients.” I opened it, expecting the worst, and discovered a whole new culinary experience.

If you’ve ever stayed at my house, you know what to expect for breakfast. Either Fruit Loops or leftover pizza. You certainly couldn’t expect to find, for instance, the kind of oatmeal that takes 20 minutes just thinking about making and not including the additional twenty minutes it takes to cook. The oatmeal alone would have been worth the early death I was still anticipating, but there was much more available.

Every meal offered was like that. I was expecting the dinner menu to include stuff like chipped beef on toast or Hamburger Surprise, but it wasn’t. I can’t remember the descriptions for all the dinner offerings but they were like “Veal cutlet brushed with fresh Enumclaw-grown basil and nestled in clarified butter from the pituitary glands of a pregnant musk ox” (well, not exactly like that – but close), and I ate every delicious bite of it. I wished I could try every single dish on that menu. And I could have because YOU COULD HAVE AS MUCH AS YOU WANT. AT PRACTICALLY ANY TIME OF THE DAY. All you had to do was pick up the phone and tell the voice on it what you want.

And there’s this. Due to my superior investigative skills and sensitive palate, I was able to discern this as the truth and nothing but the truth: The. Coffee. They. Serve. Is. Starbucks. I think so, anyway. At my house, Starbucks coffee is only served for Easter Morning brunch, or on those rare occasions when I’m entertaining Martha Stewart or the archbishop. And it may help explain why at one point during my time in the hospital, I heard some staff person in the hall grumbling, “Why does the tray for the old woman in 402 have four cups of hot coffee on it?”

At this point, I was still enjoying myself immensely. I was even starting to appreciate visits from all those masked Invaders from the Planet Cardiology. And I had other visitors as well, including the pleasant lady from Accounts Receivable who was concerned to know if I owned a car that could be lived in, because she didn’t feel that the sale of my house would be quite enough to pay the bill. (Not to worry, though. As it later turned out, Kaiser Permanente and the United States government stepped up to the plate and paid for everything except for about forty-five cents which I had to fork over out of my own pocket.)

Due to the pandemic, except for daughter Lisa who had to be properly certified as the Official Designated Visitor, I couldn’t have visitors from the real world, but among the ones from the twilight zone in which I found myself, the visits I enjoyed the most were those of not one but two individual but equally engaging chaplains, and by the time they each left, I was starting to feel a whole lot better about my impending death.

It was finally at the end of the second day, when the bomb detonated. It was triggered by the Cardiology Doc (that’s the hip term they use for the medical professionals at my hospital.

“Well, Mrs. Ford,” he announced. “I have some good news and some bad news.”

“Give it to me, Doc,” I said, stoutly. “I can take it”.

“Well, the good news is that you’re not going to die yet”, he explained. “The bad news is that you have Acute chronic diastolic congestive heart failure”. I was so shocked I might of got it wrong. He may have said, “The GOOD news is that you’ve got Acute chronic diastolic congestive heart failure. The BAD news is that you’re not going to die immediately, but you can stop paying your AARP dues for too many years in advance”. (Now, I ask you, what does that young whippersnapper know? As any knowledgeable AARP member can tell you, it’s almost mandatory to pay your dues well in advance, because as we are all fully advised, if you were so careless as to let your subscription expire, so will you.)

Even at the time, that diagnosis didn’t sound too good. It wasn’t till later that it finally sunk in. And then it became all too clear. They were practicing malpractice on me. When I was admitted to the hospital “Acute chronic diastolic congestive heart failure” was something I DIDN’T have and I never even heard of. All I had was a little problem with swollen legs and I couldn’t get my shoes on. All I wanted was a water pill.

Look at it this way. How would you feel if when you checked in, you had a case of infected ringworm, or ingrown nose hairs, or a pimple on your nose. And two days later, you were sent home infected with a full-blown terminal case of flesh-eating leprosy. Would you ever forgive the institution responsible for such ineptitude? They’re supposed to make the owwie get better! They’re supposed to Do.No.Harm. It says it right there in the cafeteria. They get awards for it.

It might be interesting to note that one of my daughters works as a chaplain for a related institution. She works in a department called “Nick-You” (sometimes seen misspelled as “N-ICU). I was always afraid to ask what they do there, but now I know. Contrary to my previous suspicions, it isn’t where Accounts Receivable are processed, or where you go to get the flu shots. It can only be the seat of the Department of Deranged Diagnoses which are unfair, uncalled for, excessive, completely unacceptable, and engineered to conjure up a condition which I clearly DIDN’T have when I arrived there.

So that, in brief, is why I intend to sue my hospital, and they deserve it. I hope you concur. And I’m going to get every penny of my forty five cents back.

This concludes my testimony. I rest my case.