My Town Monday: McPherson Hospital

Not really a good topic for Labor Day weekend, but having spent a few hours there this weekend, I decided to do my post on it.

Yes, my little county on the edges of suburbia has it's own hospital. Still. Once upon a time, an area like this might have a small, or two. In fact, like airports, Livingston County has two hospitals. Brighton Hospital has no emergency services, which, admittedly, was completely mind boggling to me for many years. The other hospital is a more traditional, if undersized hospital.

McPherson Hospital is in Howell and it's real easy to find-- just follow the blue H signs. (Now, I'd really appreciate if hospitals also had a few signs leading, oh, say BACK to the major road ways...) McPherson hospital was originally started in 1920, operating out of a house donated by the McPherson family. It had 18 beds.

Later, land was donated for the construction of a proper hospital. It is only three stories tall at the tallest. It's small. And, while still a good hospital, it certainly isn't the same caliber as, say University of Michigan Hospital about 30 miles to the South in Ann Arbor. And not far to to east of UofM Hospital is St. Joesph Mercy Hospital, Ann Arbor (aka St. Joe's.) While sometime it's a toss up between which hospital is closest and which is more high tech etc, I'm partial to the cute little one. It's like miniature hospital...

And, as I found out first hand this weekend, they have some good staff there. In fact, my visits there the other day were each shorter than the visit to urgent care the week before. See... the thing is my cat bit me when I tried to catch him to put flea medicine on his flea riddle body. Bit me bad. Hence the visit to urgent care, which included a lot of scary stuff about cat bites and infection and boogey monsters before they could give me a couple drugs a splint for my finger. Except one of those drugs had it out for me. I think it was paid off... maybe someone doesn't want me to finish the novel.

Since it's been about 8 months since I last developed a new allergy, I guess it was time. Unfortunately, by the time the symptoms manifested themselves in enough severity to conclude something was very wrong, it was late Saturday night. So, I made a field trip to McPherson Hospital... okay, techinically, it's now called St. Joseph Mercy Livingston or some such ghastly moniker, but local yokels call it by the right name, McPherson.

Anyway, I'm doing much better now. Almost have use of all ten fingers again. And the offending medication turned poison in being evicted as I write. Though I don't have any good pictures of the building.

Sitting in the hospital room for a couple hours, waiting, I came to the conclusion that hospitals should get local art students or something to paint "Where's Waldo?" style paintings with a selection of little guys (like 10) to hunt out on the walls while waiting. It's about the mental capacity likely available to anyone who happens to be in the ER... and it would be more interesting than unsuccessfully tying to hear what's going on in the hall.

Visit The My Town Monday site for other towns.