A Ride In An Ambulance

So there we were in the speeding ambulance, me sitting in a wheelchair; I refused to lie on a stretcher.  An ambulance nurse at my side, the paramedic at the wheel, we raced along at top speed the whole three blocks from Harborview Med Center to Virginia Mason Hospital up on Seattle’s Pill Hill.  We laughed all the way.  A nurse was necessary for this transfer for radiation treatment to my elbow the day after surgery because I had a continuous narcotic IV infusion going.  Focusing on the moment, spaced out on legal pain meds, I asked Jana: “What do you do with the old ambulances when you guys buy new ones?”  After I explained that our hospital in La Paz, La Paz, Honduras could use a donated ambulance, she said that I should talk to management but that it was certainly doable.  The company had previously driven a donated ambulance to a Central American country.  The ensuing conversation led to even bigger possibilities so that by the first of next year when I return to La Paz we are now tentatively planning to drive a  donated ambulance to Honduras filled with expired medical supplies otherwise headed to the scrap heap in the States.  On the return trip from Virginia Mason Hospital to Harborview Med Center, the driver turned on the red flashing lights and siren and gunned it.   That, my friends, is called networking with styyle.

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About Fortunato Velasquez

Fortunato Velasquez received his Registered Nurse's license from the State of California during the month that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. On February 15, 2020, my friend and the director of the Fundación Señor San José in La Paz, La Paz, Honduras, Sister Edith Suazo Fernandez died at the age of 47. https://youtu.be/Poqcf0vn0qQ This a video of her funeral.

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