What was causing this?Ī portable chest X-ray was brought in. Yet my oxygen levels were precipitously low. A doctor - young, fresh (shifts had just changed) - listened to my lungs and pronounced them clear. At Chestnut Hill ER, being a middle-aged woman gasping for breath got me taken directly to a room where I was hooked up to a heart monitor within minutes of my arrival. Airy, and the doctor on call sent me directly to the ER. I called the service for my primary care physician in Mt. By evening I could no longer ignore my symptoms. But Friday is a deadline day, so I worked through, even as I started to feel sicker, even as it became harder to breathe. It has been one of the worst allergy seasons in Philadelphia history, exacerbating the asthma I have suffered from since I was a child. On May 15, I could not have chosen better. I chose the hospital where I wouldn’t vie with gunshot victims for my care. When it closed a decade ago, after much controversy, I had a choice of two hospitals, Einstein or Chestnut Hill, each equidistant from my home. Even as I was gasping for breath on the way to my local emergency room at Chestnut Hill Hospital, I didn’t know I was dying.įor years my local community hospital had been the historic Women’s Medical College Hospital which had served the East Falls and Germantown neighborhoods since 1920.
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