Chapter 1
Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. -- Jonah 1:17
15 December 2020 was like a few thousand days that had preceded it. Weekdays I rose early and did a hundred pushups, on the floor beside my bed.
I had long ago worked up from just a few to a hundred, and stopped at that point due to time constraints. Most days I repeated the process later
in the day. I had a simple breakfast of whole oats with no additives such as sugar or butter, a cup of black coffee and a glass of orange juice.
I was, I believed, being responsible with regard to my personal health.
I went to work, arriving early as I always did. Chatted with a couple of friends and went up to my office. The building has two floors and during
the course of a typical day I would go up and down the stairs at least a dozen times.
That was the last thing I remember about that day. I am told that sometime that morning I went down to the office of a friend and told
her I didn't feel good and might need to see a doctor. Within a few minutes I was in sufficient distress that an ambulance was called for.
The small city where I lived and worked had a reasonably good hospital, perhaps above average for a population of that size. During the examination
a cardiac catheterization was performed and I was subsequently sent to a larger hospital in a nearby city for heart surgery.
How different things might have been had it not been for an error during the process - puncturing one of my kidneys with the contrast dye needle -
can not be known. I don't see how I could be any worse off.
The dye is known to cause kidney failure in some people merely by being present in the body. I got it mainlined into a kidney. But things were about
to get worse. But what Hospital A, as we'll call it, had done was just the beginning.
(Whether they were aware of the error I do not know. But given the nature of the Medical Industry, I have a pretty good idea.)
Hospital A is about fifteen miles from the nearest larger city. That city has two large hospitals. Allegedly there are three,
but that is part of our story.
Hospital A is located on the main drag, about a mile from the intersection with a new four-lane highway which has relatively light
traffic most of the day. As the hospital operates an ambulance service my transportation to Hospital B, my next destination, was
expeditiously initiated. Before long I was on my way.
In normal traffic the trip to the nearest hospital would be about fifteen minutes. Less for an ambulance with no need to observe
the speed limit and with other traffic giving way. But we weren't going to the nearest hospital.
I'll call it Hospital X as it won't be further involved in the narrative. Unfortunately for me, because it's the better of the two
hospitals. It's newer, bigger, more of everything the other hosptital has in terms of facilities and doctors. And after a fifteen
minute drive the ambulance could have made a right turn off the highway and arrived at the emergency room entrance in another two
minutes or so.