Went to Harborview hospital yesterday to have an x-ray with contrast (fluoroscopy) procedure done followed by a urology appointment.
There was a shortage of handicapped parking for decades. Additional parking was opened four years ago at the 9th & Jefferson building. Tunnels made for a long easy walk to the Maleng building and then to the main building. Handicapped parking was all taken yesterday from top to bottom. Fortunately on the way out, there was a spot opened right in front of the elevator. It was an auspicious beginning compared with continuing to search for handicapped parking at a giant hospital at 10:30 in the morning.
After an astounding number of irrelevant Medicare insurance questions, I was deemed a financial feasible patient proceeding to wait in a corner with a nice view of the helo-pad and south Elliot Bay. The technician that took me back to get changed and placed on the x-ray table could not have been nicer or more helpful. She laughed when I told her about my crack relapse last year—she was clearly a fellow trudger on the road to happy destinies.
The radiologist was a kindly old doctor with a beautiful young resident that wanted to be a heart surgeon. The results were results reasonable good and definitely better than worst case scenarios.
I went back to the Maleng building, checking in at noon to see the urologist at 1 hoping to maybe catch him before lunch. After a nice chat with a father from Billings Montana while looking out over Seattle to the north, his son and I were both called back a half-hour early by the urologist himself. I got the short answer and got first consult. I will keep taking Keflex for another two months hoping that cures my chronic bladder infection. That was an easy answer compared with multiple surgeries and procedures.
I am grateful for a 15-minute drive to a fantastic high quality level of health-care and have appreciated Harborview more and more over time since my sister first helped me get in there 31 years ago.
We were up in seattle with our onlychild who was ill on feb 2, 2013..talk about a crap city everywhere the parking was $5.00 an hour, we stayed with friends and the hospital let us park in their secured building. It was foggy, schmogy and the people were rude, our only thoughts were on our ill child, she was in a wonderful place for wealthy people her best friends Mom has physcian privileges there and they took great care, the food was like out of a six star hotel, most professionals wore street clothes lovely at that, she got better the minute she heard us and felt my touch and her dads, we took her back to her best friends condo and chilled, she got on a bus, to be hit by the NEMO storm in NYC, but she is not going anywhere on a full 10 day sick leave, great job! I always thought Seattle the jewel of the whole state, we live in the last city right by Oregon vancouver..not anymore..i am not impressed by parking fees, rude people, crap weather and if you don't have health insurance and a best friends Mom who has phyisician privleges at a great hospital forgettabout it! no thank you!
ReplyDeleteBus I meant to say an airplane and she is better already..Seattle has world class hospitals,doctors, etc. if you have the health insurance and money..I only like the thai places in the crap area of town to get take out to bring to our princess and we dined on it too! But as for living up there, I would never even consider it, I don't care they have all the nice places to shop. It is a cold, dreary place full of condos they removed many homes people used to live in and totally destroyed tons of trees..Here in this town it is cheaper to live, one can walk and bike everywhere, the prices of food is cheaper, one can purhcase a home if one has some money, albeit most people have to travel to Portland or the outerbanks of Portland for decent jobs, but it is lovely here..I am not too happy about $4.00 a gallon gasoline either it was that price in Seattle, grrrrrr..but it is almost that here, the buses are great in Seattle but one cannot live on a bus and grocery stores are not that frequent in Seattle proper one must live in the burbs with 2-3 hour commutes a day..no thank you!
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