Get sick.

Yes, you read that correctly. I’m not suggesting you catch a cold. That’s just too mundane. Have an exotic episode like vasovagal syncope. Spend a day or two in a hospital; meet some people you’ll likely meet under different circumstances (you know this is Rhode Island) and you’ll probably remember for years.

What are you going to do with all this information?

Instead of looking at your hospital visit as an inconvenience, recognize it as an opportunity. You’re in the turning gears of the medical system. In addition to being helped, you’re getting educated. How else would you be capable of describing an echocardiogram – it almost put me to sleep – or the work of a phlebotomist (see, I’m using one of those big words now) – if not personally experienced.

What prompted this perspective was a call from Bob Coker, the retired Toll Gate physics teacher and tennis coach who continued playing in the Saturday morning tennis league he helped start soon after Toll Gate opened more than 50 years ago. He was in his 90s when he finally put down the racket.

Bob stays in touch with the tennis gang, and following Saturday play meets a group of them for breakfast at Panera Bread in East Greenwich. He was calling to let me know that Elaine, the wife of another retired Toll Gate teacher and once a league player, Maurice “Mo” Blais, had passed. I haven’t seen Mo in years. Bob gave me the news and how she had passed so quickly.

I asked Bob about his health, and he went into some details.

I should have guessed, he would ask when I might return to the tennis court or at least stop in for breakfast at Panera.

Have a story to tell

I had a story from my recent overnight visit at Kent Hospital.

It began innocently enough.

I was scheduled for bloodwork, so Jackie Bernard, who with Carol and others have been driving me places, delivered me to the office of my primary-care physician, which also houses a Brown University lab. It wasn’t long before Cathy had drawn blood and taped a patch of gauze to absorb any blood from the procedure. I was ready to leave, but told Cathy I felt lightheaded. She reached into a fridge to get me an orange juice. The next thing I remember is being surrounded by staff including my physician, Dr. Herbert Brennan, and seeing an East Greenwich rescue, lights flashing, outside the window.

I revived quickly with the orange juice, but to play it safe Brennan suggested I go to Kent for observation.

The EMTs wheeled me to the rescue. They affixed pads to my chest to get a read on my heart, took my temperature, oxygen level and blood pressure. They also quizzed me on my medical history. I learned the town has two rescues and they each average about four runs a day.

The Kent Emergency Department was humming and ironically so was my phone that I later learned was from the office of Paari Gopalakrishnan, president of Kent. The EMTs wheeled me in. The place was busy. I was transferred to a hospital bed and Erin and Lisa quickly hooked me up to hospital monitors. They were efficient yet personable, I felt well care for. Wired up and waiting for a doc, I pulled out my phone and started making calls. Gopalakrishnan office was inquiring whether I had a number for Llewellyn King, who had written a column about his Christmas visit to Kent emergency. I told them where I was and in 10 minutes, Paari, as he is known to the Kent staff, was at my bedside.

The staff kept close tabs on my vitals. My body seemed to be running just fine, although my stomach was telling me I hadn’t eaten anything since dinner the night before. Would they be bringing lunch? The answer was no.

Drama unfolds

Meanwhile a drama was playing out in a nearby cubicle.

“Get me out of here,” a woman was yelling. The staff assured her everything was going to be all right, but they couldn’t take out the IVs that were possibly keeping her alive. The woman didn’t care. She wanted out. In lower voices the nurse talked with family members. They were trying to get the patient into hospice care. From the delays, I gathered it took multiple calls.

It was a dimension of hospital care I hadn’t considered. Not everyone wants a cure. Some want an end. 

Dr. Mark Salmon (“just like the fish,” he said) showed up in mid-afternoon. He had all the lab results and looked for a personal account of how I felt. He knows the Kent community, having done his residency at the hospital. I asked about lunch and he looked surprised.

“Ham and cheese or egg salad?”

I picked the ham and cheese and in a couple of minutes he returned with the sandwich, a blueberry muffin and a ginger ale from a waiting-room vending machine.

Dr. Salmon said I would be spending the night for observation. I passed the news along to Carol, who recruited Leslie Derrig to join her for a visit. Soon after they arrived, Joe was dispatched from “transport” to wheel me up to a room on the fifth floor. Joe put us all in a good mood and smiled broadly for Leslie’s photo as he waited for an elevator.

There was more good humor as Purple – you could tell from the hair – led the way to the room. She pointed out the bed controls and the red button to summon her if needed. We traded stories about our kids. Then it was time to say “night-night.”

The following morning there were some tests and a doctor’s visit. Everything was OK. I would be discharged late that afternoon. Carol looked over the sheets I’d been handed.

Vasovagal syncope was the diagnosis.

The short definition is a sudden drop in heart rate and pressure that can be brought on by a confluence of things which made sense to me. I hadn’t slept the night before my blood test, I had taken an oxycodone to numb my back pain and I had been fasting prior to the blood test.

Now I have tales to tell and a malady that would surely stump the tennis gang.

It wasn’t wasted time.