Living Healthy - Bonnie Durrance

When we think of February, the hearts that come to mind tend to be accompanied by flowers and chocolates and expressions of love – not the glaring ER Lights of a cardiac event.   But for some members of our community, without that Emergency Room right around the corner, this Valentines Day could have been different indeed.

February is also Heart Month in another sense, and while life-saving stories in our ER are many, two come immediately to mind as offering a message we could all take to heart.

Vivian Woodall, who is the Executive Assistant to CEO Kelly Mather, had been concerned about her husband, Joe, for a couple of weeks, as he was having trouble breathing.  He told her he felt no chest pain, and said it would get better, and, having a lack of affinity for doctors dating back to his younger days, did not seek treatment. Also, he says now, having heart disease in his family, he did not want to hear bad news, and although he suspected the problem could be his heart, he took some aspirin and hoped it would pass. It was not until he was weak, coughing blood and having extreme difficulty breathing that he finally told his wife he should probably see someone.

Joe made it in just time. The ER doctors found the problem and ordered him up to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). “It was the best care I’ve had out of any hospital I’ve been to, and I’ve been to a few,” says Joe. “I felt like I was listened to. I felt like I could ask questions without people feeling like I was annoying them. Everybody took time out to make sure everything was answered.”

“Everybody was wonderful,” says Vivian. “They were so kind, so caring, so helpful.”

Kimberly and Gaetano Patrinostro, owners of Mamma Tanino’s Restaurant in Sonoma, tell a similar story, but with a twist.  When Gaetano developed breathing problems, he thought it was asthma.  He collapsed one day in the restaurant, but thought it was just the heat. A few weeks later, when he found he couldn’t walk any distance without stopping for a breath, he sought a doctor, who prescribed some medicine for his asthma. That afternoon, much worse, he told Kimberly they’d better go to the ER. There, they found the problem was his heart and blood pressure and were able to take care of it with the proper medication.

Kimberly, after numerous experiences with illness in relatives, considers herself a savvy patient advocate. “Unfortunately, when we get sick, we don’t have that leisure to check in to who’s doing the care for us. So I just learned how to ask questions. And that it’s your right to ask questions. And at the ER, they were fantastic.” She says she understands that patients can be difficult. “My husband is a terrible patient. He has issues around illness, having lost his mother at an early age, and his spleen, in an accident, when he was a kid, in Italy. So, it was hard for him. But everybody was very, very kind. Dr. Verducci called him ‘the Lion’ because he was out there walking up and down the halls going, ‘I want to get home! I want to get home!’”

She also gives the ER nurses tremendous credit. “The nurses were spectacular.  In a way, it’s a job that seems to be so thankless. Here you are, hands in and doing all this and then the people go home and you never know what happened.” She pauses and looks over toward the restaurant kitchen where an energetic Gaetano is preparing for the evening rush. “We were going to write, but one thing and another, never did.  Then a couple months ago, the nurses came in for dinner and I broke down in tears. I said, ‘You guys saved my husband!’ I just wanted them to know that the man who cooked their dinner was saved by the hospital.”

For her, and for the Woodalls, the message is obvious: when there’s a problem, don’t wait! Go to your trusted physician, or to our own ER, where you can be confident of getting compassionate and correct care, minutes from home. “If we didn’t have an emergency room in our neighborhood, my husband could have gone to sleep that night, and not woken up.  Because, that afternoon, when he thought it was just asthma, would he have driven to Santa Rosa?”