Doug and Fred visit Mark

Hospital Journey

Fred and I went to visit our friend Mark who just had a four way by by-pass and heart valve surgery. He was in the Sutter General Hospital located in downtown Sacramento. It was a big hospital ten years ago but they added another big building next to the old one. They have multiple skyways that go from one building to the other crossing over the street below. It’s now a huge complex with the new building on one side of the street and old building on the other.

From what I understood Mark was in the new building and the first mistake I made was I parked in the underground parking of the old building. We ended up in the P2 section of parking and found our way to a 2^nd floor skyway and crossed over into the new building. Just because you were on one floor in one building didn’t mean we were still on the same floor when you crossed over into the other building. We stopped and asked many people how we could get to the Cardiac ICU unit. After a short period it became very clear all of the employees we talked with knew how to get to their particular section but couldn’t help us get to where we wanted to go. Finally a very nice lady helped us get to a security check point so we could get our visitors badges. When we came directly from the parking lot in the old building and across into the new building we missed the security check point. When we were given our visitors passes we also found out Mark had been moved from the Cardiac ICU into a private room located in the opposite direction we had been trying to get to. Armed with our visitor passes and new directions we made it to Marks room.

We had a very nice visit with Mark and when it came time to leave we asked a couple of nurses at the nurse’s station how we got out of there and back to the parking lot. No one could explain how we could do that. Finally one on the nurse’s took pity on the two of us and led us back to the same security check point we had gotten our passes from. There were four people at that station and none of them could tell us how to get back to that particular parking lot. In fact a couple of them didn’t even know there was a parking lot under the old building. Finally they called a young man who took us back to where we need to go, along the way he was telling us that this was the most complex hospital he’d ever been in, especially after they built the new wing. After what seemed like a long, long walk and with a big sigh of relief Fred and I finally made it back to the truck.

Fred and I have decided we won’t be going back to visit Mark before he gets out. I think it was just too much for a couple of old farts who got lost in a big ass hospital. I also think the two of us had all the walking we needed for one day.

Doug 21J