Hospital stay can be an educating experience

Want to know anything about Hurricane Frances?

Just ask. I believe that my 81-year-old mom and I are now the world’s leading experts.

How about the Kobe Bryant case dismissal? We can analyze it quite learnedly. Hell, we might even be able to lead law school lectures on it.

As for former president Bill Clinton’s heart surgery, we can tell you the name of the hospital, the number of bypasses (four) and even the words he uttered in the recovery room (none – he was still sedated).

We were particularly interested in the Clinton situation, because of where we happened to be at the time. We were in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Littleton, Colo., and later, in that hospital’s cardiac ward.

That’s because my mom learned that she and the 42nd president have something in common, and trust me, I don’t mean political leanings.

They both have faulty tickers. My mother was in the hospital for a serious bout of arrhythmia, which led to two days in ICU, which led to some tests, which led to the decision to schedule her for open heart surgery to replace the mitral valve in her heart. That, in turn, led to the decision to bypass a couple of arteries, on the theory that her heart was already open for repairs, so they might as well fix whatever else they could find.

She had the operation Wednesday, and everything went fine. She is now recovering.

But for the entire week before that, she and I did pretty much nothing except sit in hospital rooms, chat with visiting friends and relatives, and watch TV.

So with, apologies in advance to all Floridians and Bahamians, we were pretty much mesmerized by Hurricane Frances. It took our minds off of Hurricane Atrial Fibrillation.

Now, watching The Weather Channel for four or five hours straight is normally as fascinating as watching a worm slither across a driveway. I mean, there is no way even a highly-trained anchor-meteorologist can impart drama to a band of showers approaching Dubuque.

But Hurricane Frances had more than high drama. It also had suspense. This hurricane moved uncommonly slowly, which made it akin to watching a fist cocked for two whole days before the punch was unleashed.

And then, once the hurricane did make landfall, it stuck around for what seemed like forever.

“Did you know that the peak gusts at Fort Pierce occurred a full seven hours after the hurricane made landfall?” said my mother to some of her presumably enthralled visitors. “That’s just unheard of. They’re going to be studying this one for a long time.”

Like I said, we know a lot about this hurricane.

We had good reasons for following the hurricane, since my sister and brother-in-law live near Miami. This explains an unlikely phone call that took place that day, which included the following passage: “Are you OK? I’ve been worried about you.”

My mother, a woman fresh from the ICU, a woman still hooked up to IVs, wasn’t the one answering the question. She was the one asking it.

Even people in hospital rooms cannot tolerate constant Weather Channel exposure. So we would often switch over to CNN to see what else was going on in the world. Besides Clinton’s heart surgery, there was also Teresa Heinz Kerry’s stomach upset, which we somehow found comforting. Hey, everyone’s got their little health situations.

My mom is also a sports fan, so we also had football, baseball and golf to entertain us, especially on the weekend. We watched two cliff-hanger college games, which thankfully had no adverse effect on her heart. But if it had been her beloved Denver Broncos, I’m not sure I would have let her watch at all. A woman with a leaky mitral valve can’t go around screaming, “Hit him! Hit him!” with impunity.

During the weekdays, however, our options were limited. We resorted to watching poker on TV, which turned out to be surprisingly entertaining. It also resulted in the following, somewhat bizarre vignette: An 81-year-old woman in a hospital bed explaining to her bewildered son the intricate strategies involved in Texas Hold-Em.

Well, I can’t wait until she fully recovers and can engage in her more usual pastimes of reading, playing bridge and visiting with friends. But for now, we still have a few more hospital days and nights to get through.

I wouldn’t wish a hurricane on anybody. But maybe a nice, mild tropical depression? Is that wrong of me to ask?