Where to, Mister?

As you can imagine, I was very upset. I had had two other B.I.T.R.* before, but this was undeniably the worst. The first one bumped me back into the ICU from a regular hospital room, and the second one bumped me from Silver Lake to Richmond University Medical Center. But now that I had made it home, I expected to stay home. They wouldn't even let me walk to the ambulance. They bundled me up onto a gurney; I had reverted back to being a patient again. Once I was inside the bus, I made the mistake of asking Yisroel Brody, one of the EMTs, a really dumb question: am I going to survive this, I said. I wanted him to say, don't be ridiculous, of course you will. He, of course, had no idea if I'd survive, and told me so. That did not make me feel better. Unbeknownst to me, my brother Vrumi was tailing us up the West Side Highway. My cell phone rang: Vrumi had been discussing the situation with Shuki Berman of Refuah Resources, trying to decide whether it made more sense for me to go back to Columbia or to Mt. Sinai, since my new pulmonologist, Dr. DePalo (whom I had not yet met) was affiliated there. Vrumi then discussed it with Yisroel who in turn discussed it with me. We were literally about one minute away from Columbia when the decision was made to get off the highway and high-tail it to Mt. Sinai. Originally I was against it, but now that we were on our way, I thought it was the right decision; I figured it might be a good idea for my case to be looked at by a fresh pair of eyes (in Dr. DePalo's case, bloodshot eyes, but a fresh pair nonetheless) and by a whole new staff.

* B.I.T.R. = Bumps In The Road