Author: alohawild

I wrote this the following day, which usually means it feels more like an outline as I am further away from the emotions, sorry. I was too tired to write last night. I hope this more direct outline will be OK.

The morning started with me up at 7ish and breakfast, all clean and bright, by 7:45 to beat the last-minute rush for the included hotel breakfast. The room was clean, at least. I had convinced the hotel staff to clean the room as I was staying to at least Saturday.

I finished breakfast and then took an Uber; no walking 16 blocks today and arrived before 9. No visitors until after 10. No exceptions.

There is a nice small park in the front of the hospital called Roosevelt Park and was once the burial location of the founder of the hospital, a Roosevelt family member. Apparently, reading online, the hospital was renamed Mount Sinai West over the objections of the Roosevelt family, and they disinterred and moved Mr. Roosevelt’s early remains to the family plot. This brought clarity to me as I had heard of Roosevelt Hospital before.

After a pleasant hour break, I followed the process of two lines and using the elevator to find Susie was gone from her room. Heart test. She returned and then actually ate her breakfast.

Susie is a bit confused, and her speech stammers a bit. I can see in her eyes that she is completely overwhelmed by the events and is just trying to push through.

We met with all the doctors, about six, and they declared that Susie had had a stroke, and later we learned in a different place than last time. The lesions were artifacts in the CT scan and not Brain Cancer, as they feared. They believe they can get Susie out of the hospital in a few days.

Lunch came, and I helped cut the food as the nurses were less helpful this time. We then met new doctors, neurologists, and they were unhappy that Susie had had a second stroke. They wanted to look into Susie’s care and see what steps could prevent another stroke. They would dig through Susie’s records and out more information and get back to us. All three left in a huff, seemly insulted that Susie had a stroke, but I think they will help.

It was almost three in the afternoon; I had taken off for Greek food down the street by then. I had a salad and an iced tea. I followed that up with dessert and coffee.

The folks, seeing all the hospital tickets on my sweater, were very kind and helpful. They knew I was an accidental diner. I needed a break.

We had met with Physical Therapy and learned that Susie needed rehabilitation work at a facility. We were not going home soon. Susie cannot walk safely, and it would be risking her to take her home. The hospital would discharge her into the care of a local rehab place. I was going to be here for weeks.

I tied the Mount Sinai MyChart software to the Oregon records, also MyChart, so I can now see everything on one screen in the MyChart software. Susie now has an account at Mount Sinai. I demanded that Mount Sinai give our doctors in Oregon access to the real-time medical results. So far, I am not heard, but I will try again.

Susan’s family contacted the Methodists in NYC and got me options for housing. I spoke to Julia Tulloch, who lives here and has known Susie’s family for years. She and local folks are looking for a place for me to stay.

Susie had dinner about 6ish, and I helped a bit by cutting up some items and getting more napkins. I left just before 7ish by Uber.

I had to wander the streets for a while, as the Uber did not pull up to the hospital. So I walked until the driver spotted me. And finally returned to the hotel and changed and cleaned up.

Dinner, the last one for Mariah, was @Nine Thai place just around the corner and three blocks away. Mariah and Kat had trouble finding it. It was packed; I got the last table for three.

Mariah told us her stories of her 40+ block walk today. She made it to the new Harry Potter experience store. Susie has a new owl, Hedwig.

I returned to the hotel and slept late.

The morning started with my alarm at 7. My sleep was broken with bad dreams and worries as I missed Susie in my room. She was in the hospital and finally admitted to the hospital later that night. No MRI was managed overnight.

I dressed slowly and was at breakfast, free with the hotel stay, before eight, and had a seat and managed a bagel and yogurt. Soon there was a rush, and soon there was a line and a request for folks to take to-go containers back to their rooms. So I will try to be there no later than 7:45!

I took an Uber to the hospital without issue. I found my way through the checks and then to Susie’s room. Susie was uncomfortable and pushed her assistance button. After 30 minutes, no one responded. I was unhappy with that. I was also disappointed that the MRI was not scheduled. I asked for the supervisor and complained that I should just have Susie discharged if they would not care for her.

I received multiple apologies and a solid effort to help. It seems, not being from NYC, we were too Portland Polite. I was very direct after that. They were polite, a role reversal.

Susie’s MRI was finally at 5PM, and they , doc here in NYC, now have access to the previous CT and MRI for Susie. So I expect a preliminary finding on Monday.

I left Susie as she was finishing her chicken quarter for dinner. She was hungry and eating well. Her hand is shaking, so it is messy, but that is just a minor issue.

I met Kat Smith and Mariah for dinner at The Meatball Shop in Hell’s Kitchen five blocks from the hospital. Hell’s Kitchen is now a hip foodie land of wonder; many languages are heard when you walk the sidewalks. I

t is also required to present ID and a Vax card to enter any place for food, drinks, or a hotel room in New York City. No excuses are accepted here; this is New York City!

The food was great!

Mariah and I headed back to the hotel while Kat went back to the Kat Lair two blocks away. I then moved Susie’s and my flight to Saturday and got the Fairfield Inn to not overcharge me for four more days. The manager cut me a good deal.

I then needed to do this blog and headed to the Beer Authority, just down the street from the Fairfield Inn, to write and call some folks. I had a beer and a munchy to help lubricate the writing process. The noise and the liveliness helped write today’s story. And I am closing the bar this Sunday at 11:30 with the last call.

There is a comic and gaming convention in the area. I did pass my a Star Trek NG Cosplayers table. I did not pack my bat’lesh, so I passed the chance test them.

We will learn more facts on Monday, and I have to connect with mine and Susie’s doctors over the extended stay, here and back in Oregon.

I hope you liked the story. Thanks for reading.

Picking up on last night, we headed over to Hirschfield Theater for Moulin Rouge! We stopped off at Smith’s Bar (around the corner for the theater) and had drinks and light food.

We got there, and the wheelchair caused a panic. Apparently, the website I bought the tickets had not covered the 40+ manual stairs to our seats. I had ordered them as I thought they were easy to get to. Nope.

We had all the Vax cards ready. No admittance to anything anywhere anyhow in NYC without a Vax card (not even the hotel lobby). Masks are required unless eating or drinking in your seat. There is a nice bar in the Hirshfield and drinks may be carried with you to your seat.

We had to walk Susie up three flights of stairs. And then, after a bit more panic, they put two chairs in the aisle, and we were okay. Mariah went to the original seats as only two of us could be in the aisle.

The show was explosive with glitter and scantily clad gals and men in top hats. The Diamond did descend by a swing onto the stage (twice). The songs and music had hints back to the movie, but the sound was updated to a collage of recent tunes. Lady Gaga, Lord, and Katy Perry were covered, as were other songs in part or whole of contemporary make. Some old favs are still there but pop in without much warning.

The singing, dancing, staging, and the sets coming apart and moving off and on the stage were fantastic. The leads hit every note and danced and moved the slightly revised story with speed. You believed they were real and that in some way you were in the Moulin Rouge! I was worried that the second act would be dark, like the movie, but instead, the first song is the best dance and singing of most of the cast. It got cheers from the audience.

Despite the crying at the intense ending, Susie actually whimpered, and the sad last song of the story, the audience was cheering as they brought all the dancers and leads back on to sing more and performed even more. Much like Mama Mia!, the show steals a happy close with the whole cast returning to bring down the house and everyone, including the audience, dancing and singing together. The show finally closing with an explosion of glitter and streamers.

The staff helped Susie and us get her down the stairs and then held the shop open for us to buy some coffee cups and a sparkling shirt for Susie.

Broadway is back, and this show won ten Tony’s last week. It was packed.

We got back to our room and fell asleep almost as our heads hit the pillow. The alarm at 6 was going to be hard.

And Friday started out too early in this different time zone. We managed to get to the breakfast supplied too early and opened it. They recheck Vax cards. We had ours.

Breakfast was over, and Mariah was still missing. The timezone change got her. We managed to meet her and then met in the lobby after Mariah was ready.

We walked 3.2 miles according to various sources to the Met-Art in Central Park. It was about a 75-minute walk with Mariah pushed Susie’s wheelchair. I lifted the wheelchair over high curbs. It was good that we belted Susie into the chair!

The walk was busy, and we got to see the cement canyons of NYC to reuse an old description of Gotham. We then reached Central Park and had to cross about 1/2 of its length. A long walk! We used Apple maps to keep on track.

Central Park is always hard to describe. It is just heaven in NYC with squirrels and baby carts. We saw a pair of kids playing with Tonka Truck toys under a tree (the toys are in a bin under the strollers. Everyone, on a Friday morning, was enjoying the park.

We then reached the Metropolitan Art Museum; I was shocked by how huge. We spent five hours standing a looking. We did take a break at The Eatery in the basement for an early lunch.

It is hard to describe how overwhelming the place is. There is a room for just Picasso. Monet had multiple rooms! A small Egyptian temple was rescued from the floods and brought to the Met and reconstructed. Ancient pottery and sculptures are everywhere.

The Book of the Dead. We did not read it aloud.

We looked for, and after getting help, found Toulouse-Lautrec. He is a character in Moulin Rouge! and so we wanted to see his works. They remind you of the staging and looks of the show.

At 3ish, we said goodbye to the Met. The facility is not fantastic for wheelchairs as you have to return to the ground floor to avoid stairs by using the ramps on the first level to get to a lift to take you to the other side of the stairs. We saw this a bit a few years ago in Amsterdam, but they had a particular map for us for that (I remember they only had one in German, but we could make it work). The Met needs to do better.

It was clear you had to plan your day. So, we did Egypt, modern, and European (impressionists), and Mariah did China without us (stairs issues). We started at ancient Roman Sculptures as that was the entrance with prepurchased tickets. Also, we saw that just showing up puts you in a long and slow line to buy access for the day.

We called an Uber for the trip back, $45, to get back to our hotel. The Friday traffic headed into the Lincoln Tunnel block our driver, he was frustrated, for twenty minutes.

Mariah headed out again after cleaning up a bit. Susie took a nap, and I fell asleep. I awoke and called Mariah. She was in a roof bar, the AC roof bar on the 21st floor, and I joined her there and had a Gotham Manhattan. The view was stunning.

Our waiter was from Chicago and only had been in NYC for a year (what a year to pick). She knew only of Portland from the TV show. She even quoted it to us. We showed PDX politeness.

We then tried to connect with a Jazz place–Birdhouse, but they did not have an open slot until 8:30. So we went to a Celtic place. More stairs, my legs are not interested in stairs anymore. We got to the second floor (the roof was apparently full), and we had dinner (steak for me and salad for Mariah). More drinks, Irish Mule for me, and Blueberry Mule for Mariah.

I got chicken fingers for Susie to go and picked her up a Diet Coke on the way back.

Susie had dinner in the room. Mariah texted me she was hanging with the band.

We made arrangements for Saturday. It will be complex, but that story is for tomorrow!

Yesterday, Wednesday, was a travel day with all the stress and boredom that comes with a travel day. We left for NYC at 11PM after a day of getting packed, buying things to pack, and getting to PDX, and then wait for our flight.

I was up about 7ish as I had things to get done. As usual, I made myself a light breakfast (my meds require food) and did all the dishes. I could not sleep any longer as I realized I had no bag for the wheelchair parts, and I would, I thought at that time, and I would need to check two bags for Susie. So I got up and figured that all out. I have a spare Nike red bag that matches the color of the wheelchair (something I would call “hot red”), and everything fits perfectly in the bag.

I then got all our boarding passes done and paid for all the bags. Susie’s second bag was $45! Which is a lot for a $216 air flight (round trip). However, there was no choice, and thus I paid another $150 for all our bags (it is cheaper to do it online).

After Susie was going, I got her breakfast of yogurt and cereal; I got a late lunch/dinner at the Teriyaki place nearby in our local strip mall. Susie had her fav, Chicken Bowl, and I had the Bento. We ate early as we would be headed to the airport, and with Covid-19 restrictions and the hiring problems, there is little food in PDX to be had.

We got through the process at PDX, leaving about 7:50ish, and managed check-in with the help of a United agent. He saw that we had too many baggage tags and refunded the $45 one. So we would take our wheelchair to the plane and carry on the bits in the Nike red bag. It is a carry-on–I did not know.

We had a set of drinks at a bar next to the gate and then headed over just in time to be loaded nearly first on the plane. Susie made the plodding walk to the back of the plane (near the restrooms, but not too close). A kind stewardess walked Susie in her hands all the way to her seat. The other passengers behind us were supportive and told us to take our time. The same stewardess got us a wheelchair delivered in the plane to get Susie out; she would be too tired to repeat her Marathon walk after the flight.

My bag was missing after we managed to get to our baggage. Not all elevators work for you, and I had to try different ones to finally get to baggage claim with Susie. After a short adventure, somehow, the bag just appeared in the pile of missing tag bags. The baggage claim person was not happy to have to help me as she could clearly see all the bags, they have little bar code stickers on them, had reached baggage claim.

I was happy to have everything. We then had breakfast standing near a Dunkin Donuts by Baggage Claim 2. Yes, there was a line of folks getting their coffee and food items. Yes, I am back in the Eastern USA, where Dunkin Donuts rules!

Refreshed and refueled, we went for the next $100 plus adventure. A taxi to Times Square. As we had luggage for three and a wheelchair plus carry-ons, an Uber would require an SUV. I saw the taxi line was full of SUVs and decided that would work for me. So it was a boring 90 minute trip to Times Square. Our driver used some backroads to cut the time using some apps. There in New Jersey, I saw this rather old-school hotel sign.

Yes, back in the east, where mirror rooms are (were?) a thing.

I forgot how much I dislike bumper-to-bumper traffic in a tunnel. I used to do that in the Harbor Tunnel in Baltimore. The Lincoln tunnel air was good, and there was no water running down the walls like in the old Baltimore tunnels (yikes!).

We arrived suddenly, popping out of the Lincoln Tunnel into NYC, and were at the hotel. We thanked and tipped out the driver, who was polite (and not insane as many in the area).

The Times Square Fairfield By Marriott is wedged into the small streets and tall buildings of the area. I have a view of the bus station, and the New York Times building is just up a block. A very efficient desk gal got us into our room early (yes!), and we all crashed for a bit.

Mariah and I then went on three quests after resting for about 90 mins. First, we needed a sandwich and to bring one back to Susie. Second, we needed to locate the theater we are headed to tonight for the Broadway event I have planned, Moulon Rouge. Lastly, we wanted to see the local area and get more familiar with it.

I always forget how massive everything is and how well done everything is. Nobody wants a crappy sandwich here, and while the town can be rough, everyone is busy doing what needs to get done. Usually, people are helpful even if they growl a bit–the growl is like Portland’s passive-aggressive politeness. It is just a thing.

Susie rested some more, and we will start getting ready some more. Mariah is in Central Park with her camera. Last I heard, she was being pedaled around Central Park to be back in time to be ready for the show.

I will stop there and take a short break. I will write about the show in tomorrow’s blog.