Beech Tree News Network

There is a saying in the sports world: The great ones play hurt.  It is a reference to the athletes who stay in the game despite personal injury.
    On Friday, July 12th, my husband, Garey, drove to the VA hospital in Nashville to take a routine stress test.  Four minutes and 39 seconds into the test, the medical team shut it down.  Garey called me from the hospital.  He had been admitted.  He was scheduled for a heart cath the following Monday.  I drove down on Friday evening to spend what would be one of four days at the hospital with him.
    I don’t know if you’ve heard the horror stories I’ve always heard about VA hospitals in general, but if you have, I’m here to tell you that as far as the VA hospital in Nashville is concerned, those stories are wrong.  I have never been treated as well in a hospital as Garey was treated in that one, not even when I gave birth to my two children.
    They also extend incredible hospitality to any relatives who have opted to stay with their loved ones in the hospital.  The hospital has a policy that friends or relatives can’t spend the night in the patient’s room if it has a double occupancy, but they do provide a large lounge with recliners and sofas for anyone spending the night.  They give each guest a clean sheet, clean pillow, and a blanket that has been warmed as only a hospital can warm a blanket.  Relatives are also given a food voucher for one meal each day.  It was a remarkable experience.
    I would stay in the room with Garey during the day, taking the occasional walk outside or down the hall or over to the Vanderbilt hospital café.  (There is a catwalk that connects the two hospitals.  Vanderbilt is involved in much of the medical care at the VA hospital.)  As I walked, I would see them, the injured and the sick, veterans in hospital beds or in the halls or sitting in the waiting area of the walk-in clinic.  Their faces were lined with what they wanted to forget.  Many walked with canes and wore tee shirts imprinted with their particular branch of service.  One vet in a tee shirt that proudly displayed “Marines” wore a cap that read “Super Man.”  I’m sure he was.  You could hear them encouraging one another.  I think that’s what I heard most, now that I think about it, encouragement.
    On Sunday, Garey got a roommate.  His name was Jim.  He was a Marine sniper during the Vietnam war and a chemical weapons expert during the Korean war.  He wanted to talk, so I listened.  Most of what he told me was the stuff of nightmares, and I wondered how this man was still sane.  He shot an American soldier right between the eyes from one thousand yards away, he said.  The boy had been captured by some North Vietnam soldiers.  The soldiers had nailed him to a tree—I will spare you the details that kept me awake that night.  Jim had shot the boy to spare him the horror of the torture he was going through.  He told his superiors that they could court martial him if they wanted to.  They didn’t.
    Jim was moved to ICU that afternoon.  He had to have a pacemaker implanted.  Garey  got a new roommate named John.  He was a WWII veteran in his late eighties.  He struggled to breathe even though he was hooked up to oxygen.  He told the nurses he felt like he was burning up and could they bring him a fan.  We told the nurses to lower the temperature in the room as much as they needed to.  They couldn’t locate a spare fan, so Garey and I took turns fanning John with a newspaper while the nurse kept putting a cold cloth on his forehead.  The room was at a balmy 55 degrees when he finally got some relief.  I slept in the lounge that night.  When I came into the room the next morning, John was eating breakfast.  I, and the medical staff attending him, was surprised that he had made it through the night. 
    “You look better,” I said.
    “The good Lord took care of me,” he said.
    John would continue on for as long as he could.  He would stay in the game like he has always done.
    Garey had his heart cath on Monday.  Everything looked fine.  There were no blockages.  They scheduled an ECG for Tuesday morning.  That’s when they found it, a leaky valve and slight thickening of a small area of the heart muscle.  The medical team told Garey they would try to control the problem with meds to begin with.  If that doesn’t work, he might have to have surgery, but that will be down the road.
    When Garey was ready to be released, the medical staff thanked him for his military service.  They thank each veteran in their care for his or her service.  Their thanks is genuine.  They realize that many of these veterans have injuries that would take most people out of the game, but the great ones play hurt.