A difficult week…

Last week I mentioned a concern I had with how the writers of The West Wing would handle John Spencer’s death in this weeks episode. I have to say it was incredibly well written. It was someone hard to watch though. Two years ago yesterday I was in New York to help mom and dad with dad’s recovery from surgery and dad was admitted to Yale New Haven Hospital.

We took dad to an appointment with Dr. Zaret, his cardiologist, at which Dr. Zaret admitted dad to Yale for observation. On Thursday of that week dad was moved to CICU in a hurry and put on a ventalator, there were concerns he would not make it through the night. I can still remember sitting in the room that night listening to the heart monitor and jumping at the slightest change in the noises. The nights to come were filled with codes, if you have never been in a hospital during a code, consider yourself among the luckiest people in the world. The alarm goes off, people literally run from every which direction and you can see in their face the results of their action as they return to their normal post. One particular night, their was a code in the CICU. The code was called for dad’s wing, all time just stopped. I ran to the window, we were in the waiting room across the courtyard, but I couldn’t see what was going on. I called the duty nurse from the waiting room and asked about dad. She said that they were in the middle of an emergency and to call back, I said I know…I want to know if that emergency is my father, she then realized I was calling from within the hospital and confirmed for me that it was not dad. She called me in a little later to sit with dad, it had been the person a couple doors down, they didn’t make it. You couldn’t help but feel guilty that you were happy it wasn’t you friend or family member. After two very long weeks dad was able to go home and while he never did fully recover, he achieved his goal, “to dance at our wedding”.

I can’t say enough good things about the folks at Yale New Haven Hospital. The folks in the CICU were incredible, Dr. Zaret, Dr. Papuc, and one hospital chaplan whose name escapes me.