Firstly, I am a veteran receiving health care at a VA across the country. While visiting my sister in Boca Raton Florida for the past month, I ran out of an extremely important medication. I'm sure all medications are important, but this one is especially so. When I came to Florida, I forgot to change my temporary address so my refill requests were delivered to my home address in Washington state. When the refill arrived, I asked my wife to send them to my Florida address. However, she forgot about the Labor Day extended weekend and no mail service on that day. I expected this particular medication to have arrived the Saturday before. So my last dose was Friday. I cannot miss one dose before I would be suffering, and suffer I did. This morning, Monday, I was like a zombie and in a very bad way. My sister suggested, well insisted, we go to the VA WPB center for help.

When we arrived, I checked into the ER department, and after the usual check of vitals, I was brought right back. Within a minute or two, Nurse Frannie came in to assess the reason for the visit, and when I told her, I could see the concern on her face. In one instance, she knew exactly what was wrong, even asking me if I had ever run out of this medication. When I said no, nurse Frannie explained the symptoms and why. In reality, I was not hopeful anything could be done, and I would have to suffer until my meds arrived. Alas, that was not the case. Nurse Frannie left the room and was back in no time with the doctor. AKA angel #2. The doctor took one look at me, asked a few questions and then gave me a glimmer of hope. This kind of medication can not be prescribed but by specific physicians and she was not one of those, she said. However, she assured me that she would make a couple of calls to get me the needed medication. For me the situation was desperate; desperate to the degree dark thoughts enter the mind. I'm guessing it was about ten minutes later, both nurse Frannie and the doctor were at my bedside saying something to me. Because of the brain fog that swept in, I didn't get what they were saying, but I heard my sister say, "Oh, thank you so, so much!" I was pretty sure what that meant but my sister said they had solved everything and the temporary medication fill would be down in 15 minutes. After a few minutes, my sister heard nurse Frannie say to someone, if it isn't here in the next five minutes, I'm going up to the pharmacy and get it myself. It arrived shortly after that. The impending relief brought me to tears.

I will end this by saying, I have never had this degree of care in the past. I love VA Healthcare and have never had a complaint, but this experience was above and beyond. These two caring professionals should be the model by which all should aspire. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I hope they will know that out of the hundreds of patients they see every year, one of them was so touched that he took the time to write this.