Tag Archives: ICU

You’d better not get sick!

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We’re sitting across from each other in the ICU Waiting Room after standing at the bedside of our dear friend Phil. Phil and I are old classmates and getting older at age 73.

Kay’s face is solemn. Sad. Pensive. Her brow is furrowed, the way it gets when someone she loves is in trouble. She goes deep inside,  dives down into the darkness to draw wisdom and courage, and comes back up and out when she’s ready.

She says something I can’t hear. I shake my head. She’s says it again quietly, I suppose, because there are other people in the Waiting Room. My inability to hear only serves to underscore the reality of our getting old.

After several more failed attempts to hear her, I walk over to her chair.

“You’d better not get sick!” she says.

I tell her I won’t because, unlike our formerly fit-as-a-fiddle racquet ball player friend Phil in the ICU, I don’t believe in exercise. “Exercise is bad for your health,” I’ve said a 1,000 times to Kay’s dismay. I’m more like Barclay, also in the Waiting Room, who, like Phil, looks fit-as-a-fiddle. (This is NOT the canine with the same name who’s waiting in the car in the hospital parking ramp.)

“Barclay, do you exercise?” Barclay’s head recoils like a boxer dodging a stiff jab, his eyes squint, his face grimaces at the thought. He slowly raises his right hand as if holding a spoon, opens his mouth, and shoves whatever’s in the spoon into his open mouth. “Ice cream?” I ask. “Doughnuts,” he says. “What kind?” “Chocolate.” “What brand?” “Doesn’t matter. Any kind. Doughnuts!”

Whether our form of exercise is eating doughnuts, playing racquet ball or working out at a gym, we’re all going to get sick. Some sooner, some later. It’s one of two things every mortal shares in common with every other mortal: we are born and we “get sick” (i.e., we die).

“You’d better not get sick!” we say with a smile. In the meantime we give thanks for today and tonight, the comic relief of the doughnuts, and the opportunity to love each other as we pray and wait for Phil’s recovery in the ICU.

– Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, June 13, 2015

DWI Straddling the Center Line

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Extra DWI Patrols this Weekend. Drive Sober. The message began to appear yesterday, Halloween, above the Interstate Highways in Minnesota.

It reminds me of a funny story.

Years ago, as my friend Ron remembers it, he and his parents were driving home from a relaxed dinner at the Nagy’s, the newly arrived Hungarian refugee family. Mr. Nagy was a gourmet chef accustomed to offering guests the best libations along with a delicious professionally prepared home-cooked meal.

Ron’s father, John, was not much of a drinker, maybe a beer once in a while, but nothing more. John got a little happy at the Nagy’s.  Driving home with young Ron in the back seat and his wife Helen in the passenger’s seat, John was straddling the center line on a two-lane, two-way street just a few blocks from home when Helen criticized his driving. Helen was a force to be reckoned with. “John! You’re drunk. You’re over the line. You’re wandering over into the wrong lane. You’re going to get us killed!”

“Helen,” said John, “it’s obvious you don’t know the law. There’s a law here in Pennsylvania. After 10:00 p.m. you can straddle the white line.”

Telling the story to my friend Steve and me last year, Ron could hardly get through the story. We’ve been friends since Kindergarten in Broomall, Pennsylvania. Today Ron is in ICU in a Pennsylvania hospital following emergency surgery straddling the center line.

Prayers surround you, Ron. I remember your story like it was yesterday.