John Howell

I got another perspective of Kent Hospital on Friday, one that I haven’t seen in more than 50 years of reporting news in Warwick. I was a patient at the hospital’s ambulatory care center, that long brick building that angles off to the east of the hospital entrance.

It looked deserted when the three of us – Carol and the dog, Farrah – arrived shortly before 6 a.m. There was a parking space right in front, in fact, a bunch of parking spaces. That never happens at a hospital. The lights were on, but there was no sign of activity. Had we arrived too early? Would anyone be there to perform the procedure addressing the torn meniscus in my left knee?

Carol checked the door. It opened and she disappeared. Still, there wasn’t a sign of anyone. A minute later she was back at the car.

“It’s on the second floor,” she reported. We left the car and Farrah smack dab in front of the building and took the elevator up, arriving at a reception area I recalled from a ribbon-cutting years ago when the center first opened. Nothing seemed to have changed other than the fact no one was there, or so I thought.

“Over here,” came the feminine voice from behind a glassed-in reception desk.

I entered my name on an elevated keypad while Carol asked about parking. We were good leaving the car if it was just for the time being, but if she was going to stay while I went in for the procedure, she would need to move it. Carol disappeared to find a space, which again was unbelievably easy, and I found a seat in a waiting area that started to fill up. There were six of us.

Carol returned and we decided it made sense for her to go home and wait for a call when everything was done. Not soon after she left, Melissa, a slim, cheerful nurse who has been at Kent for more than 20 years, guided me into the operating wing of the building. Being the first patient of the day, I got the first room within the bay. Melissa, whose two daughters are following in her footsteps as nurses, left me a plastic bag for my clothes, tagged my walker and gave me a johnny to change into. She was back with a heated blanket to keep me toasty and then prepared me for an IV that would be used by the anesthesiologist. Soon I was to get a visit from Anthony DiMauro, physician assistant to Dr. Ramin Tabaddor of University Orthopedics, who would be doing the procedure. He was checking in to see how I was doing and whether I was ready.

I was still almost an hour away from being wheeled into the operating room. The ward was coming to life. A clutch of nurses gathered beyond my room, talking about their upcoming weekend activities. There was plenty of laughter. This didn’t sound like the hospital I knew. It was a stress-free environment.

Nurse Melissa was back in. Did I want to watch TV while waiting? I chose to check out the Wall Street Journal I’d brought along, which surely was an oddity but a topic of conversation when visited by the anesthesiologist. The front-page story on the multi-million dollar compensation package for the new CEO at UnitedHealth Care was a hot topic. And then I had a visit from another nurse who took vitals and an assistant who shaved and washed my leg with a disinfectant soap.

“You didn’t expect to get a spa, did you,” she said. Indeed, I had not expected such lavish attention, but was loving it.

Tabaddor joined the group. He was upbeat, ready to start the day, which consisted of five or six more procedures that morning. He marked my left knee with a pen, just to make sure they had the right one.

Soon after, I would be wheeled down to the operating room, where I would say good morning to everyone before losing consciousness for the next hour and finding myself back in my room. Carol was on her way to pick me up.

The vitality of the ambulatory center, the attention to detail and the care went a long way in building my confidence of a positive outcome. It pays to laugh, too.

In his effort to be thorough, the anesthesiologist explained he would administer two drugs. One would put me to sleep and the other would prevent me from snoring.

I replied, “snoring?”

 “Yes,” he said.

“I don’t want to wake up the doctors,” I said.

He laughed.

It was going to be good morning … and it was.