Commentary: Veteran salutes health care workers after hospital experience

It all started on Nov. 30 when my wife and I were sitting in our home and she had a mild seizure.

I called 911 and the local fire rescue took her to Aultman Alliance Community Hospital, but Alliance deferred because it was slammed with COVID cases. I was following behind a few miles back in my car and the Sebring dispatcher called me, telling me that they were taking her to Aultman Hospital in Canton.

At Aultman, there was madness that night. They were overrun with patients in the emergency room.

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My wife experienced a grand mal seizure and the emergency room was overcrowded. She was going to be admitted at that time under a stroke protocol.

We had to wait 30 hours to get her a bed at the hospital. This is no fault of the hospital.

Aultman took great care of my wife. She got admitted to a floor where there was a nurse working 16-hour shifts. Many nurses are working 16- and 12-hour shifts.

My wife stayed eight days at Aultman undergoing diagnostic exams and treatment for control of seizures. They discovered she had a tumor over the speech center on the surface of the brain.

Her nurse, who was working a 16-hour shift, kept her morale up. That treated her soul as well as her body.

I am a 100% disabled combat veteran. I served in the Marines in Vietnam. I flew medical evacuation missions as the door gunner on a helicopter.

I wanted to honor this nurse. I ordered a challenge coin for her and on the last day of my wife’s stay at Aultman, I gave her a nurse’s challenge coin.

This is a thank you. It is a military tradition. My wife was referred to neurosurgeon Dr. Nicholas Bambakidis at University Hospitals in Cleveland. She was given the appointment to see him the very next day upon her discharge from Aultman.

"This is unheard of in medical circles," an Aultman doctor said. "This neurosurgeon is world renowned. You don’t get next-day appointments.”"

At the consultation, there was a resident neurosurgeon with Dr. Bambakidis. He was a young man originally from South Vietnam. It turned out that his father escaped and went to the Philippines at the fall of the South Vietnam government and immigrated here. I told him to say, "Hello to his father," a very respectful and warm gesture that is done in South Vietnam.

My wife and my only child waited at home for the call for my wife to report to the UH main campus. The call came Dec. 13.

At noon Dec. 15, she went into surgery to remove a tumor from the left side of her brain. She was in surgery for three hours, and then spent a night in the intensive care unit.

Her ICU nurse that night was doing a 12-hour shift. She was doing well. They had found an aggressive-looking tumor over her speech area.

I have seen health professionals doing long, unnecessary hours because Americans have not gotten their shots and wised up to COVID. I have sat in waiting rooms and listened to people complain of how a vaccine side effect might inconvenience them.

A nurse told me at Aultman Hospital while working the COVID floor that a patient begged to have their breathing tube removed even though they were on 60% oxygen. They wanted to be on a mask only. The next day the nurse was reading their obituary.

I remember shot day in boot camp. I remember the dead and wounded Marines I transported in my helicopter.

There is no crying in baseball. Get your shot. This is your country, and the health professionals are serving you and your country.

I would like to see groups adopt a nursing station. Bring them finger foods and candy. You can bake those killer brownies that we all love so much or those Christmas chocolate chip cookies.

Hospitals are understaffed. Nurses are doing long shifts and many times they are not eating lunch.

These people, the health care professionals, are fighting a war in our own back yard for us. They are our grunts, our foot soldiers to keep us alive every day.

Veterans and National Guard members, recognize them! Give a health professional the appropriate challenge coin and a salute.

Let us honor and support them.

Clifford Hayes is a Sebring resident.

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Commentary: Health care workers deserve applause during pandemic