DENNIS MYERS Against the Grain Advertisement

It seemed like the same cough and cold I get every winter, so I did the normal thing and got a prescription and spent a couple of days in bed, hoping to knock it out fast. I kept waiting for an improvement. Instead, I experienced a new problem.

Every time I exerted myself, even walking ten feet, my chest started pumping like crazy. I had to sit down and let it subside. This thing was so debilitating, I scarcely noticed the original cold and cough.

I headed for the urgent care facility at a Reno hospital. When I approached the counter, the receptionist looked at me like she'd seen a ghost. I learned later that my face was blanched white. I was handed over to a nurse and then a doctor who started working on me and soon sent me to the emergency room.

All my life, I've been very fortunate in my health. I don't smoke or drink, and you'd be amazed how the sheer volume of health problems is reduced by those two factors. It's been 45 years since I've had to spend any extended time in a hospital. Any new experience is nourishing to a reporter, particularly when it involves an important issue in public policy, in this case health care. So I paid attention and took notes.

At the emergency room I went through a triage process and was designated number one of the 30 or so people there. A doctor quickly decided I had somehow lost a lot of blood. I was given a blood transfusion, then a visual probe was sent down my throat to look for a cause of the blood lack. In my stomach, several ulcers were found, photographed, and cauterized (sealed by burning). My body, I was told, had less than half the blood it should have had, which was why my heart had been pumping so hard, trying to get what blood there was where it needed to go.

The hospital was full, so there was no room for me and I was kept in the emergency room for about 12 hours. The next day a room was found and I spent two days in the hospital, receiving half a dozen transfusions and medications to deal with the problem.

The difference from my last hospital stay in 1962 was striking. Back then, my doctor came to see me three or four times a day. Last week, I saw the doctor once a day, and it was a different doctor each day. This is probably familiar to anyone accustomed to being a hospital patient today, but I found it isolating and troubling. When four or five hours passed without the doctor looking in, I fretted, my questions about my care and needs unanswered. By the time 24 hours passed, I was angry.

There was also no continuity of care. Between urgent care, the emergency room, and the hospital room, I saw six doctors - only one of them more than once. I kept thinking of the child's game of telephone and of how bad information is passed along.

Someone once said a hospital bed has a taxi meter attached to it, and I was very conscious of that. I tried to get the doctor to cut me loose after one day, but he would not. I have health insurance, but even just my portion of the cost for a two day hospital stay for this kind of an unusual malady may well keep me in debt for the remainder of my life.

Then there was the time they lost me. After noon on my second day I was moved from the third to the sixth floor. When they rolled me into the sixth floor two-person room, there was no bed on my side of the room. They put me in the middle of a broad hard wood floor in the wheel chair and went off to look for a bed. I sat there alone for an hour and ten minutes. Two of my friends telephoned the hospital during that period and were told I could not be found. Finally, someone came and found me and decided I should use the one bed that was already in the room.

I was then asked if I wanted lunch. It was two in the afternoon. Sure, I said. She went off and was never seen again. Finally the doctor appeared and signed me out. I didn't wait to be helped. By the time the nurse arrived in the room I was dressed and packed.

For years I've been covering health care issues and I've heard time after time about the sense of unease people have about their hospital stays. I have no idea whether issues of managed care are responsible, or irresponsible, and I certainly am not faulting anyone. Many of those I dealt with were terrific and skilled and they saved my life.

All I know is, that sense of unease was real for as long as I was in that hospital.