CHASING A PANDA

No, not this kind of panda...

I’ve been stopped once or twice by a cop - never got a ticket though – and I’ve never, ever been chased by one. Good grief! But this past Sunday, I turned the tables on the normal way of things, and I chased a cop.

Long story short. Frank was coughing heavily and breathing poorly, so we took a trip to the nearby emergency room. They didn’t like what they were finding, so they sent him to the hospital. We are accustomed to going to the hospital that’s about fourteen miles away, but there was no room there. We got sent to another hospital about twenty-three miles away. Driving to the closer one means driving in a lot of heavy traffic. Driving to the farther one means relatively rural driving, and almost the same time to get there. Nice.

The ambulance driver, who later told Frank to apologize to me, said it was a straight shot down to Rt.75 then east. The hospital is right on Rt.75. Ah, yes it is, but he forgot to tell me about the detour around that huge hole in the road near the end of the trip - the detour that has no signs to tell a driver how to get around it and get to the hospital.

Well, I drove around and around, seeing the some of the gorgeous homes in the town, seeing the municipal buildings and the main streets, but I couldn’t locate the hospital. Then, you guessed it, I saw a policeman in a nice panda car. I latched on and followed him around through several streets and turns. Finally, he thought something was off, and pulled into a parking lot, and then round a big dumpster, checking to see if I’d followed. I did. I met him on the far side.

...this kind of panda!

He was really good about it. He gave me simple directions - just about two miles with two turns. I got to the hospital in no time at all after that, but I was really frazzled by the whole excursion. I can look back now and smile, but until I saw that police car, I thought I was doomed to drive the streets of Monroe, North Carolina, until the cows came home or I ran out of gas.

And, to bring you up to date. It turns out that Frank’s COPD has come back to haunt him after ten or twelve years. Whatever triggered off the change, the strong symptoms, and the seemingly over-reactions of the medicos, he’s doing just fine. He’ll be back on one of the meds he used to take, just to be sure, and we’ll go on from there.