Barbey Girl

A blizzard at the end of a long Cape Cod driveway is a bad setting for a breathing crisis—especially when you live with a rare lung disease. Before we could dial for an ambulance, we needed a snowplow. That’s how our week of sirens, scans, and unexpected heroes began, with two brothers clearing a path so help could reach the house and a pair of EMTs trying to place an IV while the ambulance bounced over ruts.

What unfolded next pulled back the curtain on emergency care for rare conditions. LAM can fool even seasoned clinicians, and the first scans didn’t explain why oxygen wasn’t enough. So we phoned the one person who studies it every day. Within minutes, the focus shifted from “Is the LAM worse?” to “This looks cardiac,” and we moved from guesswork to a plan. Admission brought new characters: an earnest ER doc who asked the right questions, a performative planner with grand promises, a Belarusian night nurse who crossed a line and got reported, and a grounded, brilliant nurse who treated the patient like a whole human. Along the way we discovered the Barbey Pavilion—brand-new, oddly designed, and full of sliding farmhouse doors that feel like a fitness test at 3 a.m.

The medical headline is clear: respiratory failure tied to a newly discovered mitral valve stenosis. That means cardiac rehab now, careful pacing at home, and possibly open-heart surgery this summer. The human headline is clearer: advocacy matters. Keep your expert on speed dial. Learn staff names. Ask simple, specific questions. Celebrate the people who show up—Akeem and Rahim with the plow, the EMTs with humor, the nurse who really listens, and the partner who becomes a one-person care team with a stitched hand and a steady smile. We close with a quick swing through Grammys fashion highs and lows and a moment for TV legends we lost, because life doesn’t pause when you’re healing.

If this story moved you or helped you think differently about navigating care, subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a review with your own advocacy tips—we’ll read our favorites on an upcoming episode.

Find our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/447251562357065/

Transcript

Opening And On-Air Hellos

SPEAKER_03 0:20

Hello. Welcome to the Anne Levine Show. It's Tuesday, February third, twenty twenty-six. We're coming to you from WOMR ninety-two point one FM in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

And WFMR 91.3 FM Orleans and streaming worldwide at WOMR.org.

SPEAKER_03 0:56

Now that of course is Michael over there.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Hello.

SPEAKER_03 1:01

Michael Hill, Michael Levine. He's got a whole lot of names.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Have many names, yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:08

He actually has more names. Have more names than that, yeah. But I think we'll stick with those.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Yeah, it gets a little complicated, really.

SPEAKER_03 1:16

It sure does. Um, and Michael Hill Levine, other names, wins the award for greatest husband in the world.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Uh, you uh.

SPEAKER_03 1:29

For this past week.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

It's not uh it's been a bumpy week, folks.

The Rare Disease Backstory

SPEAKER_03 1:36

Well, bumpy is one way to describe it. I'm gonna tell you about this week. Um in some detail. Cause why not? So Tuesday morning I woke up and I couldn't breathe. And as a lot of you know, I have this weird rare disease um called lymphangeliomyomatosis. That's right, that's what it's called. Yeah, and you have the same expression as your f on your face as all of my doctors.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Yeah, they they don't know what that is either.

SPEAKER_03 2:16

No, no one does. I think there are two of us in Barnstable, yeah. Have been two of us in Barnstable for, I don't know, fifteen years. I don't know if there was ever anyone else.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

You know, I think the odds that two people with the same thing even living on the Cape, that's astronomical. But the fact that we live less than a mile apart from each other exactly, that makes it even weirder.

SPEAKER_03 2:46

It's totally bizarre.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:48

But it's true.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Anyhow, uh so that really uh you did have some trouble this week, but that was not the problem. Well, I mean, not in its entirety, right?

Snowed In And Desperate For Help

SPEAKER_03 3:01

It was one of the problems. Um, the first big problem was that we were completely snowed in.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

Yeah, actually.

SPEAKER_03 3:13

And I want to say we had what, two feet at the base of the driveway?

SPEAKER_00 3:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:18

But it was hard as rock.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

And we have a very at least at the top of it, yeah. And there's nothing either one of us could do.

SPEAKER_03 3:30

Well, there's it's a really long wide driveway.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

Right. Well, and I've got one arm. I've got a hand, I'm I was told I'm not to do stuff like that after the surgery.

SPEAKER_03 3:43

Michael had hand surgery a few weeks ago. So he's not allowed to do any shoveling. Let's put it this way, though. Even if he was allowed to do shoveling, maybe he could have advanced three feet in this driveway.

SPEAKER_00 4:03

Yeah, it's it's that's probably, yeah. I mean, I would had to go at it for many days.

SPEAKER_03 4:09

Right. Yeah. And I needed like instant because I needed an ambulance.

SPEAKER_00 4:15

Right, we needed an ambulance for you because you truly could not breathe uh even though you were getting oxygen. Right. It just wasn't enough. So we had to we had to get you to a doctor.

SPEAKER_03 4:27

I tried calling different companies, and they were all like, sorry, we had a bit of we have more clients before you. I was like, but this is an emergency. And they said, Well, good luck with that.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:42

So anyway, I remembered these two amazing guys. Their names are Akeem and Rahim, they're brothers, and they helped us in the fall doing all kinds of landscaping stuff, like cutting down limbs and right pruning things. Pruning, I mean things that were just out of control here.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

Yeah.

Akeem And Rahim To The Rescue

SPEAKER_03 5:08

And I thought, oh, let me call those guys and find out if they've got any equipment. Well, an hour later, and they live on the other side of the Cape, they showed up with two trucks. Michael, tell what equipment was on these trucks.

SPEAKER_00 5:25

Well, you know, one was a uh a very large, like, you know, a hauling truck uh with a plow on it. And the other truck had like uh an industrial-sized uh s um snowblower. And uh, yeah. It would have been like a alpine snowblower if it had tracks on it. Yeah. I mean, it was big. It was very, very big.

SPEAKER_03 5:54

And um and I was like, no way.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:59

They made it up this driveway in like what half an hour?

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Yeah, half an hour, 40 minutes, something like that, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:07

They cleared the whole damn thing, or at least up to a point where we can get the ambulance can get in and turn around.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Yep. Well, and the moment they actually left the driveway, that's when I called the ambulance.

SPEAKER_03 6:24

So Yeah, and they cleared everything from the house to the driveway so a gurney could get through.

Ambulance Ride And Sky-High BP

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Yeah, it was yeah. They were it was amazing. So Yeah, so that happened. So the ambulance came to the house.

SPEAKER_03 6:40

Yeah, it was kind of hilarious that we had to get an emergency snow plow situation so we could call an ambulance.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

Right. Yeah, they weren't gonna make it up the drive. No, no one was gonna make it up to drive. Just driving up it, it wasn't gonna happen. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:58

So, um, yeah, so then the ambulance came and the fire truck, and there were like, I don't know, eight guys in the living room kind of hovering around me. Not messing around. But they didn't know what to do exactly. Right. But anyway, they finally like lashed me onto this gurney thing.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Like chair thing, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:26

Well, it's a chair that folds back and turns into a gurney. So they slid me into the back of this truck, and um, you know, they're they start heading off. Woo! That's right.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

Um get out of the way. This woman is aboard our ambulance, and we need to get her to the hospital.

SPEAKER_03 7:55

Exactly. Meanwhile, inside the ambulance, hilarity ensued.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Oh, oh, is this what you call you call this hilarity?

SPEAKER_03 8:04

Well, you know, I have got in times like those, I've always got all kinds of humor.

SPEAKER_00 8:15

That is true. You do try to break the tension with humor.

SPEAKER_03 8:20

And I made all these guys laugh, and they all tell me their names. You know, I told them to tell introduce themselves to me. Um, you know, they've got me naked, they're putting on electrodes. The truck is the ambulance is bouncing like crazy over all the snow and the potholes. And so this guy, Diego, is trying to place an IV as we're bumping. I mean, like, yeah, uh, it was so crazy. He couldn't do it. And I was like, look, never mind, let's just go to step two. And he goes, All right, here, choose the chew these. He hands me four chewable aspirin. Ah. And they're doing an EKG, and I've got stickers all over my body, but not the cute kind.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Um, not smiley faces or anything. No, no.

SPEAKER_03 9:19

Not little uniforms.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

Weird new weird stickers too. They're very gummy and stuff.

SPEAKER_03 9:27

I mean, one thing I've got to say is you don't have that weird tape that's really hard to get off, and that leaves those black squares.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

Right, right. It never comes off.

SPEAKER_03 9:38

Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

Yeah, you could scrub at it with uh with a chore boy.

SPEAKER_03 9:42

Yeah. Yeah. With out and magic cleaner.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

Right.

SPEAKER_03 9:47

And it doesn't work. But anyway.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

You need to like get a like a torch on it or something.

SPEAKER_03 9:52

And you have to spend many hours dealing with it. So anyway, yeah, here we go, bumping along. And I'm like, Brian, I know he's the guy in the front. It's freezing back here. And so Diego goes, We need it tropical. We need it tropical.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

Oh, that's very funny.

ER Triage And Misdiagnosis Fears

SPEAKER_03 10:15

I know. Like he's making this official, you know, like medical announcement. Yeah. So then it got so hot back there. I was like, could you please take these blankets off me and you could take the rest of my clothes off while you're at it if you want to. Ha ha ha. They love that one. Um, anyway, so we're going along, and my blood pressure was 225 over 120 something.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

It yeah, it became alarming.

SPEAKER_03 10:55

And I thought I was a goner, and so did they, actually.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Yeah, I guess you might not you might not have thought you were a goner except for the fact that these guys started thinking, uh oh, she might be a goner.

SPEAKER_03 11:10

Yeah, and they're like on the the the thing with the hospital.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Yeah. You know, like uh Yeah, Rampart, this is uh yeah engine 51.

SPEAKER_03 11:20

Yeah, exne on the art hat A.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:26

Um, but that's what they thought was happening. Right, yeah. And they told me that up front.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

Right, which is why you got the aspirin for one thing, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:35

Yeah. And they were like, should we administer nitro? And they said no. Um, so I was a little disappointed in that.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:48

Well, I thought some nitroglycerin might have been the thing.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

I don't uh and learning what we've learned, it may not have been the thing. That's true. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:57

Anyway, so they get me to the hospital and throw me on a gurney. These guys can throw a person around, I gotta say.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

Yeah, they're very practiced at that.

SPEAKER_03 12:09

Yeah. I mean, I am by no means their heaviest passenger anymore.

SPEAKER_00 12:14

No.

SPEAKER_03 12:14

But still, to me, it just felt so weird. I was like, no, you guys, it's okay. I can do it. Yeah. I really said that. And they were like, shut up.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:27

And they so they mushed me onto this gurney. And the guys were so sweet, they kept coming in to check on me.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

Isn't that nice?

SPEAKER_03 12:38

All day. They like really thought I was.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

Yeah, I guess every time they ended up back at the hospital, they came and checked on you to see how you were doing.

SPEAKER_03 12:48

And I actually had a drug list that I handed them because they had asked for it.

SPEAKER_00 12:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:54

And this one guy, Brian, came back into the room at some point and he said, You left your drug list in the ambulance. I was like, oh my god, you're so cute.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:08

Just leave it over there. Wherever. Leave it over there. Anyway.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

Yeah, that was they were very nice.

SPEAKER_03 13:18

It turned out that I had respiratory, respiratory um failure, and I had a degree of heart failure all at once.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

Right.

Calling The Expert And Pushing Back

SPEAKER_03 13:33

And long story short.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

I mean, they are related, yeah. And yes.

SPEAKER_03 13:40

Um, long story short, I won't get into the like diagnosis, prognosis situation, but um I was in the hospital Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and I came home late Saturday.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

To the blizzard. At least we thought there might have been a blizzard. We got a lot of wind, but we didn't get any snow on Sundays. I like many that was good.

SPEAKER_03 14:15

Like many of my religious nurses um believed that there was not another snowstorm coming.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 14:26

I'm not kidding you.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:28

I had women come in. I only had one male nurse, and we'll get to him in a second. But I had women come in and I asked all every nurse that came in, I asked about the or whoever it was, cleaning people, um, nurses, aides, whatever. I'd say, what's the forecast? And some would say, Oh, blizzard. Most of them had accents, so forgive me, but I'm gonna do that.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 15:04

Blizzard, maybe 18 inches of snow, and you shouldn't go home, you should stay until mine.

SPEAKER_00 15:13

I do I do understand people worrying about that because I did too, because I'm I didn't even worry about snow. I worried that the power would go out in our almost 300-year-old house, which is already very hard to heat. Right. So, uh, you know, if the power were to go out, that would be very difficult if you had just gotten home from the hospital.

SPEAKER_03 15:36

Well, my thoughts about that were screw that. I want to go home. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

And if I have to just Well, I mean, I did I did bring the generator. I we have a portable generator. I brought it out. It's you know, it's big enough to keep keep what we need going. But thankfully we didn't need it uh at the time.

SPEAKER_03 15:56

If I can just curl up on my bed with our two dogs and our two cats and our husband and just bury myself under a mound of blankets and whatever.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Yeah, and actually kind of be warm.

Admission, Dr. Littleman, And The Plan

SPEAKER_03 16:15

Right. I didn't care at all what would happen. So um anyway, came home and I started tell telling Michael, now, there are always amazing stories um from hospitals and hospital stays.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:45

And I have to tell you, um, sorry, I'm answering an important text while I see, okay. Well, it it has to do with dinner. So that's you know, the most important time of day is supper time.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 17:07

Isn't it? Supper supper time, supper time. If you're a beagle if you're a beagle. If you're a beagle, which a lot of us around here are. All right, well, where should I start? Um with this whole thing. Well, let's start with the first night. So the first night, you know, I get hauled upstairs from seven brutal hours in the emergency room. Yeah, that was uh I still have like pain on my butt from sitting on that damn gurney for seven hours. Anyway, so they brought me upstairs.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

And and with the crazy guy out in the hall who who was he was so lost, he just he had no idea what the heck was going on, and he was hollering to find out. Well, he was hollering about everything because when uh when from the Well, when I left, he looked at me and he yelled at me. He said, Am I inside or am I outside? It's horrible. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:16

It was so sad, but it was so uh it was like, Where are my earplugs? Because you're sitting, yeah, I was sitting on this incredibly uncomfortable gurney, they couldn't lean me all the way back.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

The whole thing is stressful as hell. I mean, you're because they you you can't breathe and they say you have a heart problem.

SPEAKER_03 18:38

Right. So, um, and I'm trying to lean back, but I can't lean back because my oxygen dips if they lay me prone. So they've got me in this.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

Which is yeah, one of the symptoms that was coming up was very disturbing.

SPEAKER_03 18:54

They've got me in this weird position in this horrible emergency room, and my butt is killing me anyway. And the only thing that's happening is I keep uh getting, you know, people keep coming in. We need more blood, we need more vitals, we need more and some of them take you to do a CAT scan or whatever. Okay, now we're doing a CAT scan, now we're doing an x-ray, now we're bibbity bibbity boop.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

Yep. Now someone's gonna wave a feather over you.

SPEAKER_03 19:32

Yeah, and someone's gonna sage the room. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:37

I mean, they're trying all kinds of stuff.

SPEAKER_03 19:39

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:40

Um, to come up with some kind of diagnosis. Now, I have a magician, wizard, who lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And I had him um texting me back and forth.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:08

And this one doctor who gets five stars for this sat down next to my Gurney and said, What do I do? I do not know this disease at all. I don't know what to do for you.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

I I think it I think it was really brilliant of these guys too to to ask you that and to delve into what it is because it's yeah. I mean, because they just don't know. And then luckily, uh, thankfully, you have a boy who's an expert. Right.

SPEAKER_03 20:52

Who with whom I'm very close. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

And who I'm and who's a researcher on this very disease.

SPEAKER_03 21:01

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:02

And so, yeah, he's not just a wizard.

SPEAKER_00 21:05

No.

SPEAKER_03 21:06

He's also a world-renowned doctor and expert in Ram. In the particular disease that you have, yeah. So um, but he's also a wizard, a prince, and uh, an amazing guy.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

Yeah, yeah.

Night Nurses, Monitors, And “The Box”

SPEAKER_03 21:21

So I text him. Now this guy has a job, like a hugely important job. Right. It's not like he's sitting around waiting for me to text him. Right. No. But I texted Sirius in Cape Cod Hospital. Um, whatever I did, I sent him my sats, and before I pressed send, practically, my phone rang. And he never calls me. We always text back and forth. And he said, What is going on? And I told him, and he said, You need the following things done. And he said everything that I needed. So when that doctor came back and said, Tell me what to do, I did. Right. You you actually did know what needed to be done. Yep. And I said, These are the following things. And he said, Well, I'm gonna call one one of the people that takes care of me is an oncologist in Boston because Lamb is not a pulmonary disease. Right. Lamb is a metastatic disease that um will will shows in your lungs. Right. Well, mostly shows there, it shows other places too. Right, exactly. But it's fatal in the lung. The lung is where it's the big problem. So um I explained that to him to the best of my ability, and I said, nothing you showed on the CT scan, which was the first thing I had to have, is any different than any CT scan I've ever had at this hospital. That is not the problem. Right. Okay, so now we're looking at the heart. And he said, now we're looking at admitting you. Yeah, right. I was like, perfect response, good idea.

SPEAKER_00 23:35

Right, because well, because at first they're like, we don't know this disease, maybe she's just having an event with this disease, right? And she'll be okay and she can go home in a little while. Right.

SPEAKER_03 23:45

And I'm like, no, that's not what's happening.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

No, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_03 23:49

And they were like, well, this has got to be what's happening. I said, listen, I had lamb yesterday, I had it last week, I had it 10 years ago. Right. This is not how this disease behaves, it moves super slowly, and you don't suddenly have an event like this.

SPEAKER_00 24:12

Right. It's never that.

SPEAKER_03 24:14

It's just until And if you look at my scans and compare them to other scans, you'll see that it's, you know, it nothing's changed. It's stable. Right.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

It's yeah, it's been relatively contained.

SPEAKER_03 24:30

So they've said, okay, time to get you a room upstairs.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:35

Now, this little man, I'm not gonna say his name. Um Dr.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

Littleman.

SPEAKER_03 24:46

Littleman. Dr.

SPEAKER_00 24:47

Littleman.

SPEAKER_03 24:48

Dr. Littleman walked in. He had a very strange accent for someone named Littleman, but we'll let that stay where it is. All right. He had the highest voice I've ever heard um on pretty much a man or a woman.

SPEAKER_01 25:06

Okay, all right.

SPEAKER_03 25:07

And he came and said, Hello. Uh-huh. I am Dr. Littleman. Uh-huh. I took over for the doctor that was in here before. And I was like, oh, yeah. And and the doctor that was in there before, I'm gonna tell you, his name is Haven Spencer.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

Haven Spencer.

SPEAKER_03 25:35

And that's quite a Haven is such a cool name.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

Yeah, that's a very interesting name. I never would have thought of that for a name.

SPEAKER_03 25:43

And this guy Of a person. Right, or of anything, really.

SPEAKER_00 25:48

Well, of a of a New Haven, you know.

SPEAKER_03 25:50

I mean, there's a Oh, I was thinking of something you would name that, like a dog or a person. Right. Well, I'm like you can name a town. Right. Right. Anyway, the loveliest, one of the loveliest doctors, and he was the one who said, tell us what to do.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:11

And he said, then he said to me, We're gonna transfer you.

SPEAKER_00 26:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:16

And I said, No, you're not.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

Yeah, don't, don't, don't, stop doing that.

SPEAKER_03 26:20

Yeah, just be quiet about that.

SPEAKER_00 26:22

We're not doing that part.

SPEAKER_03 26:23

I said, get my oncologist at the Brigham on the phone. And then I wasn't worried. I mean, let's put it this way. Um, she knew all she deals with with me is lamb.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

Right.

Vera, Boundaries, And Reporting

SPEAKER_03 26:39

And I already knew this is not a lamb situation. So Haben Spencer called her and she said, This is not a lamb situation.

SPEAKER_01 26:49

Right.

SPEAKER_03 26:50

Your problem, tag your head. And yeah, exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

That's pretty much how it went down.

SPEAKER_03 26:56

Yeah, and so that was that. And he came back in and said, Well, they don't want you either. So we're gonna admit you. Well, anyway, anyway, when the shift change came at like six o'clock, the doctors start charting to leave at seven. And Dr. Littleman came into the room and he said, These are the things we will be doing. I would be admitting you. I'm like, oh my God. Yeah, well, and I mean, I wish I could describe him. Let me try to describe his hair. He had this gray hair, but tons of it, that was shaped into this weird sort of ice cream cone, soft ice cream cone that's just starting to melt. Kind of a situation. And it was incredibly coffed.

SPEAKER_01 28:04

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 28:04

Like there was so much product on this guy's head.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

That sounds like what my mother used to do when she started going losing her hair. She started swirling it on her head.

SPEAKER_03 28:17

Well, this guy wasn't losing it. He was, it looked like it was growing while I watched him. Wow. Um, and he yeah, a very hearsuit individual with a voice like this.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

Yeah, and those things seem to uh contradict each other.

SPEAKER_03 28:36

I want you to know I am your doctor.

SPEAKER_00 28:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 28:42

Which made me laugh so hard because I'm like, no, I'm your doctor in this situation, but anyway, and he says, We are going to do the following, and he makes this list a mile long, all of which I knew was not gonna happen. Right, yeah. And it didn't, but anyway, I put in orders, and he had on tiny he had tiny feet with these really shiny loafers.

SPEAKER_02 29:14

Oh, no.

SPEAKER_03 29:15

But he was chubby. I didn't see this guy, so no, you're just gonna have to take my word for it. Yeah, um, and Dr.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Littleman.

Building Trust With Nurses

SPEAKER_03 29:26

I know I have his name, but of course I'm not gonna say it. Um, so we will now get you ready to go to your room. And in the morning, a different doctor will see you. And I was like, Baruch Hashem. Yeah, yeah. Bring on the bring on the different doctor. Bring on a whole bunch of different doctors. Anyway, so this this woman, I won't say her name, let's call her Shannon. Okay, she's in transport. Now, by the way, those of you who live in and around the Hyannis area or have visited or been to the hospital or any such thing, know that there's a brand new pavilion at Cape Cod Hospital, and it is called Drumroll, please. The Barbie Pavilion.

SPEAKER_00 30:32

Yeah, how about that? Barbie.

SPEAKER_03 30:35

Yep, and that's because some big shot with a huge ego decided I want my name on a pavilion at Cape Cod Hospital, and his last name is B-A-R-B-E-Y. So you would be taken to a room in the Barbie pavilion.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:05

I'm like, oh my god, what's happening?

SPEAKER_01 31:09

Right.

SPEAKER_03 31:10

So, anyway, this woman from Transport, Shannon, starts push pushing me around the hospital, getting me to my room, and she starts telling me about the wonders of the rooms in the Barbie pavilion.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

Oh, okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:30

And so she's like, they're all private rooms, and they're all so fabulous, and you won't believe the farmhouse sliding doors that go to the bathroom. And I'm like, what?

SPEAKER_00 31:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:51

Farmhouse? We went there with the room.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

Which I didn't recognize uh right away, and I'm trying to pull the door open. Well, that's a whole other story. Yeah. So that was embarrassing, really.

SPEAKER_03 32:05

Now, this new pavilion functions as a maze for rent fairs.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

Oh man, it is. It's lunacy to get there.

SPEAKER_03 32:16

And it's really hard on the nurses and the doctors because the thing is set up like a square, but there's no way directly across the middle.

SPEAKER_01 32:28

Right.

SPEAKER_03 32:29

So they have to go all the way around to get something, and then all the way back.

SPEAKER_00 32:37

It is the most ill it was not well thought out. No. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:43

Terrible.

SPEAKER_00 32:44

Um I mean, it is all brand new. You can certainly give it that.

SPEAKER_03 32:50

You're in a private room, incredibly uncomfortable chair. Really big TV. Huge television. I don't watch television in the hospital. Um, but enormous.

SPEAKER_00 33:03

Yeah, like a 55 or 60-inch TV. Yeah.

PT, Dignity, And Getting Discharged

SPEAKER_03 33:08

And so but you're like, how many feet away from it are you, Michael, when you're lying in the bed? Yeah, you're you're quite a ways. Yeah. Well, not quite a ways. You're not far enough away. Oh, okay. In my opinion, to watch this huge thing. Never mind. Um, I turned it on once for five minutes to watch some Australian Open. Right, yeah. And then I just couldn't anymore. Oh my god, we d we haven't even talked about that. No, we haven't. Um, so I finally get in bed, and they've finished taking their first, you know, pints of blood out of me to run it through the lab and stabbed me and jabbed me and bruised me and all this stuff. And at some ungodly hour, I am awakened by a male nurse who says to me, I need to see your box.

SPEAKER_00 34:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:22

And I'm like, what? I mean, I looked at him like I don't know what I looked. I was like, what? What are you I said, what are you talking about? Your box.

SPEAKER_00 34:39

He said he he you know what, he loves to say that too. You know he does.

SPEAKER_03 34:43

Of course he does.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

Just for the confusion factor. Just to see the you know, someone's face go blank and panic and yeah, yeah, all of that, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:54

And that's all he said. I said, what? He says, your box. Well, it turns out that's what they call this heart monitor, oxygen monitor, oxygen monitor thing that they put in the front of your beautiful gown.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

Yeah, it's connected to all the pro you know the stickers and stuff all over your own. Right, and the probe on your finger, right?

SPEAKER_03 35:20

And so all of this information goes on to boards, you know, electronic boards that tell them, uh, she's got enough oxygen for a while, whatever it is.

SPEAKER_00 35:34

Or she doesn't uh because if you didn't, and right, so let's come in and check on you.

New Heart Diagnosis And Gratitude

SPEAKER_03 35:39

Let's run in there and find out what the deal is. Well, anyway, so I showed him my box once he told me what that was, and he disappeared into the night, and fortunately I didn't see him again. Yeah, I was gonna say he never returned, right? No, yeah, just had to see my box once, and that's all he wanted to see.

SPEAKER_00 36:03

That was enough for him. It sure was.

SPEAKER_03 36:06

So he left. Um, I had some wonderful nurses, um, but the most amazing one was I had already been in, I don't know, two nights, three nights, and it was on that night that this vision appeared, and she was a chunky, gorgeous, very butch-looking woman. Okay, she had practically no hair, it wasn't shaved, but it was kind of as close to shaved as you can get. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 36:52

Yeah, that'd be like a two.

SPEAKER_03 36:54

Right. And it was jet black, gorgeous. It was such a cool little haircut. I can't. And then she had this face from like some sort of painting or something.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:13

This gorgeous face, perfect.

SPEAKER_00 37:15

She's really quite quite pretty.

SPEAKER_03 37:17

And then she had um little earrings in, just a little sparkle, and she was fantastic. And once again, I'm going to not mention a name.

SPEAKER_01 37:32

Right.

Grammys Fashion Hits And Misses

SPEAKER_03 37:33

Um, let's call her Vera. Okay, yeah. And so she wrote her name on the board, which they all do, and I'm your nurse for the night, and blah bitty blah blah blah. And I'll go get your meds and whatever other thing they bring you, so, and your other gifts for the day. So she came in, and I had one of the craziest experiences of my life. So, and as I say, I thought she was something about her, she was just arrestingly beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 38:17

Right, okay.

SPEAKER_03 38:19

Um, and you wouldn't necessarily think that you know, she was kind of chunky, she was wearing nothing resembling scrubs, and um just this kind of so did she actually work there? Well, that's the thing, I'm getting that. So she comes in and she said, I have to check if your sensors are sensors are working. Now, at that point, I start to hear a hint of an accent. Okay, but I wasn't a hundred percent sure. Well, she starts trying to look through my sleeve, and my breasts are not as perky as they once were. So never am I, yeah. So sometimes you have to kind of look around, push a little this way, push a little that way, right? Maybe a little lift. Well, anyway, she just said, Oh, never mind. And she gave me just started grabbing the feel up of my life.

SPEAKER_00 39:36

I have never had a right, it might as well been a uh breast exam, except you just had a mammogram.

SPEAKER_03 39:43

Oh no, this was much more deep than that. This was she grabbed both of my breasts and was like rubbing them around and feeling, and she had nails. She had, you know.

SPEAKER_00 40:00

Well, she gotta get those stickers off of you.

SPEAKER_03 40:02

You know, and so she's feeling around, feeling around. I was like, oh my god, what is happening here? I never had anything like that happen to me.

SPEAKER_00 40:14

Oh goodness.

Remembering TV Icons We Lost

SPEAKER_03 40:15

So um finally she stopped and she said, Okay, they are there. And this like Slavic accent comes comes to the fore.

SPEAKER_00 40:30

Ah, I see, yes, okay.

SPEAKER_03 40:32

And suddenly I looked at her, and she went from being this gorgeous, exotic, exotic looking butch to a Belarusian prison guard.

SPEAKER_01 40:50

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:51

It was like I could see her morph before my eyes.

SPEAKER_00 40:56

It's it's it is funny just like you know, figuring out and learning where someone comes from and how that can change how you look at them.

SPEAKER_03 41:08

Well, also I started to hear accents.

SPEAKER_00 41:12

Well, yeah, that's what I mean. That's I mean, that's how you were figuring it out.

SPEAKER_03 41:15

Right. I did say, well, I asked her, I said, where are you from? And I'm thinking, what is she gonna say? She said, Bia la rus.

SPEAKER_02 41:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:25

Now, I have a lot of experience with that part of the world because I did a show for two years.

SPEAKER_00 41:36

Spring 242.

SPEAKER_03 41:37

And I investigated, interviewed, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

SPEAKER_00 41:43

Show's still going, by the way, folks. Yes, of course it is.

SPEAKER_03 41:46

Um, the what third or fourth anniversary is coming up on the 24th. Um, gosh, I don't even know. I mean, you started a thing. I did. I started a thing. So anyway, I didn't think it would be a good idea to start mentioning that to her. Right, yeah. When she said Bielarus, I didn't and she said, it is in Russia, it is west of Russia, and I didn't want to say I know the map as well as you do at this point.

SPEAKER_00 42:22

North of yeah, north of Ukraine. We we know where the border is there, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:26

We know all about that. Uh-huh. So um I just kept my mouth shut and you know, for the rest of the night, let her feel me up or take blood or whatever the hell she she wanted to do.

SPEAKER_01 42:40

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:41

I did call the police and HR.

SPEAKER_01 42:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 42:46

And um they said, yes, we've had many reports about this woman.

SPEAKER_00 42:51

I I did t I did tell you that when Nicholas hears this story, he's gonna call the police.

SPEAKER_03 42:56

Well, I'm preempting him and just letting him know he can relax because they they've been alerted. All right. So there was so there was that situation. Yeah. And I'm trying to remember. Then there was this woman. Again, names will be changed to protect mainly myself. Um, her her name was Earl Lise. Earlise. And Earl Lise walked in one day, worst perm I've ever seen in my life. And it it has to be, because how many perms do you see anymore?

SPEAKER_00 43:44

Well, uh, yeah, but in your life, see that that is a lot of them. Well, because in the eighties, oh man.

SPEAKER_03 43:52

Well, this was the worst one.

SPEAKER_01 43:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 43:55

By far. Um anyway. So she walked in, hi, my name's Arlise. I'm gonna da da da. Give me your right arm so I can try to find a vein that hasn't already been destroyed.

SPEAKER_00 44:13

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:14

Um and we'll take it from there. She was very nice, I thought. Oh, but uh yeah. Well, in the beginning she wasn't very nice, but then by the end, I was like, I did what I do with nurses, I made her my best friend. Yeah. And so she would sit in my room and tell me all of the details of her life, her past, her current, and her future. Her future, yeah. And it was pretty interesting, actually. Um, but you know, these people don't get asked their names, or if they do, they don't re they don't get remembered the next day necessarily, and they get treated poorly by a lot of patients.

SPEAKER_01 45:14

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 45:15

And my belief has always been these are your people, you need to make best friends with them.

SPEAKER_01 45:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:25

And at first I was like, I don't know how Erlise and I are gonna get to that best friends point. Right. But we totally did, and she uh she was really cool, she was really honest with me, she was really helpful. Um, so it was it was a beautiful thing, and I feel incredibly, incredibly lucky. Yeah. So I wanted to say that um Gold Star for Earlis. Gold Star, and if you want to tell the difference between a hot butch woman and a Belarusian, it's not easy.

SPEAKER_00 46:18

Right, okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:19

You have to be careful, yeah, or you might find yourself in a situation.

SPEAKER_00 46:25

You might find yourself fondled.

SPEAKER_03 46:27

Yes, yeah. Um fondled, I don't even know if I can call it fondled because that implies a gentleness.

SPEAKER_00 46:37

Right, okay.

SPEAKER_03 46:38

This was like, you know, I I I have to I hate to bring this up, but I once had a vocal teacher, and we were doing our um our annual recital, our spring recital, and we were rehearsing, and a few of us got the giggles, and we're on stage rehearsing, and we just couldn't stop. We were a complete mess.

SPEAKER_01 47:10

Right.

SPEAKER_03 47:11

And he stamped his foot on the ground and said, shut up, or I'm gonna have to come up there and slap some tits around. Oh no, needless to say well, needless to say, you know, all of our laughter just increased a hundred.

SPEAKER_00 47:39

Absolutely, of course. We did not stop laughing.

SPEAKER_03 47:42

I know, we were on the floor at that point. We all fell to the floor, laughing, crying, howling from that threat. And it was also what a gnarly thing to say. Well, yeah, yeah. You know, what is that? Um, but anyway, and we weren't all women. I mean, the whole thing was crazy.

SPEAKER_00 48:14

It's any funny thing to say. It's a hilarious thing to say.

SPEAKER_03 48:18

So, um, and especially if you're trying to say order in the court, order in the court. That's not how to do it. Right.

SPEAKER_00 48:26

No, no, no, no, don't do it that way.

SPEAKER_03 48:28

It did not work. So I have to say though, that spring recital was amazing. It was just amazing. Good.

SPEAKER_00 48:42

So you did get out of the hospital, so that's good. I did.

SPEAKER_03 48:47

Yeah. Um, I got out partly by cheating, not in a big way, but my doctor said, I need to have you cleared by PT before I send you home.

SPEAKER_00 49:01

Right, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:02

Well, she walks in, and um I said, you know, if we're gonna walk around out in the hall, I'm gonna need some kind of robe. Because they've got you in one of these classic things where it's wide open in the back and you have nothing on.

SPEAKER_01 49:24

Right.

SPEAKER_03 49:25

So I said, I, you know, I'm gonna need this robe to be secured in the back. And she looked at it and she said, Oh, well, the tie is broken. And I said, Well, I'm gonna need a different robe, or I'm gonna need an additional one. She said, You know what? All I need you to do is walk around the room a little bit, just walk around your bed and walk back around your bed and sit down.

SPEAKER_01 49:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:57

And she said, Okay, you're good to go.

SPEAKER_00 50:01

Right. Well, she just wanted to know that you were ambulatory. Ambulatory.

SPEAKER_03 50:07

And she said, now you've been going to the bathroom on your own. I said, yes.

SPEAKER_00 50:12

Right, which you had, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:13

Uh which I had. I didn't tell her about the one disastrous time I had when they gave me ivy LASIKs at night. Right. And for those of you who know what that's all about, when your body tells you it's time to go to urinate.

SPEAKER_00 50:36

Yeah, it's too late. It's too late. Yeah, you're done.

SPEAKER_03 50:40

So I take off, I push this heavy, beautiful wooden farmhouse door. I'm telling you, if you were an older, weaker person, yeah, you're not getting that door open. I could barely get that door open. Then I get it through the door and realize that my cannula is stuck on something, which happens occasionally, whatever, it's a really long tube.

SPEAKER_00 51:17

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 51:17

And I finally said, I don't, there's nothing I can do. I'm either gonna wet the floor, so I just plowed in, pop, the oxygen comes undone, and I don't know, maybe two quarts later, I got up and went to try to grab the oxygen tubing, and I couldn't stay in that position, so I start to go down and I just put my hands down in front of me.

SPEAKER_01 51:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:54

So here I am in this beautiful farmhouse. Beautiful farmhouse door with immaculately clean floors, uh, and you could actually park a car in it.

SPEAKER_00 52:06

I mean, it's big, they're huge, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:09

So put my hands down to brace myself and was able to just once I, you know, got myself centered, I just stood up, went out, plugged myself back in, and got back on. Now, if I had told anyone on the staff there about that incident, yeah, it would have meant that you couldn't do anything by yourself the rest of the time you were there, yeah. Which is horrible because I've been in that situation. Yep. And anytime you need or want anything, like I want a tissue that's you know not within arm's reach. Um, or and then if you sit up in the bed, let's say, uh, and put your feet on the floor, the alarm goes off. They have the bed alarm.

SPEAKER_00 53:10

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:11

And so I did not want to have to go through that shenanigans. I just knew I had to be careful the rest of the night because the latex, LASIKs, anyone who gives you an IV LASIKs at night is cruel.

SPEAKER_00 53:29

Yeah, yeah. What's wrong with those people?

SPEAKER_03 53:31

Um, because you're dying to get any few minutes of sleep you can grab from anywhere. Um, but this was not to be. Not that night. So that was my week. Oh, now it turns out I have a heart problem. I've got stenosis of the mitral valve, which means I'm gonna do a bunch of PT and hopefully have a decent summer, and then possibly have open heart surgery. Uy, such things. Um I am blessed in my life to have the most wonderful pets in the world, to have the most wonderful husband. Michael is that guy that's like a nurse, that if I need something out of arm's reach, I have to ask him. And it's really hard for me to do, you know. I just feel like, oh, I hate he was just in here, you know, passing me a glass of water, and now I need the pillow, you know, that's down on the floor somewhere. And there's nothing to do except, you know, ask him. And he just does whatever, whatever it is, with a cheerful countenance. And I'm very, very grateful for that. And now over to you, Michael.

SPEAKER_00 55:29

Yeah, we got we have no time for anything else. Uh, I will tell you that uh winner of the uh fashion award from me for the Grammys Red Carpet, Sabrina Carpenter, she looked lovely. Uh Loser, unfortunately, uh Chapel Roan. I love her, but man, this was just this was just weird. Why? What did she do? It was that Terry Moogler dress that uh that basically attaches to her nipples. In the front. Yeah, that's true. And I believe there's no shoulder, there's no there's no nothing. That's where that's what happens. And uh and uh yeah, it was just it was not I don't like it. It's just it's not right.

SPEAKER_03 56:22

That sounds crazy. I wonder if she's had top surgery or something.

SPEAKER_00 56:26

I I don't know, but it's very I didn't like it. It was it's I mean it's very rock and roll, I suppose, you know, it's very Grammys, I suppose, but it's not uh I don't think it's a good look for anybody. Yeah. So that's where we're at there. And um, and you know, we've had a couple people who passed, and I know we're gonna talk about one here in a second, but uh we we haven't uh I want to give a minute to Damond Wilson, who uh played Lamont on Sanford and Son, who just passed at age 79. One of the greatest series, uh one of the greatest uh shows on television. Oh my god, growing up, that was uh that was one of my favorite things, and it was one of everybody's favorite things, and it really and it kind of made a difference.

SPEAKER_03 57:27

Yeah, you know, oh yeah, it sure did.

SPEAKER_00 57:31

But uh, I mean, so we lost him and uh and another.

SPEAKER_03 57:37

I want to address the fact that shockingly Katherine O'Hara passed away last weekend, and she was an Emmy Award-winning comic actress who endeared herself to audiences, and she had this like maternal everywoman kind of quality, but with a touch of surreal oh yeah, and it came through in Home Alone and of course in Shits Creek, which was her major return to television world fame, and she died on Friday at her home in LA, and she was only seventy-one years old, and she had a heart condition. Um her life is and her CV is way too much for me to go into at this point.

SPEAKER_02 58:53

Life is from the world.

SPEAKER_00 58:56

I've been watching her since the I don't know, since SCTV. Whenever the heck that was, which was ages and ages ago.

SPEAKER_03 59:07

Well, she was from Toronto, and she br began her career as an understudy to Gilda Radner with Second City, and she was on SCTV, and she was on everything, and we all love her and loved her. So please, for Catherine O'Hara, put a light on.