Last week I was talking with a longtime friend and training partner in martial arts about her visit to a wound specialist that she had to see. She had to walk up a long and winding corridor in on one of our county’s premier hospitals. I should have prefaced all of this by sharing that my friend is 87 years old. She is in great shape. For decades she has been an avid five miles a day walker, practitioner of Yoga, Tai Chi plus Calisthenics, and she starting martial arts training at the age of 65. Did I mention that she also fences? You get the picture. This is a fit gal to be sure. But she did find herself last week on the “Long and Winding Road” having to wend and weave herself through a long labyrinth of hard marble flooring, florescent lighting, and no signage to let her know where she was going. With the last people and chairs that she saw, by her estimation, about one half mile back at the nurse’s station, this long over-land hike to find the wound doctor began to feel more like the “Road to Perdition.” In the “Old Worlde”, there were warnings on maps about going out past the “last dragon.” Maps back then had dragon images placed as markers to let people know that “here there be dragons,” so they would take an alternate route.
At the edge of the map was the ‘last dragon,’ and this meant that there is no knowledge about what lay beyond it. Remember, the world was still much unknown in those days. But, seriously, in a bustling hospital complex bursting with people in all sorts of ambulatory or other conditions that may impede their ability to safely make it to one locale or another? With the distance so far, was it beyond the “last dragon”? We’re talking outpatient, not inpatient and we’re talking people who under normal daily activities get along just fine, like my friend who can dance around me with a sword with the adroitness of a kitten. And yet – there she found herself, wondering where that desired doctor’s office was. Was it, indeed, out past the last dragon?
I should point out that walking on hard marble floors or hard hospital floors of any kind is not the same thing as walking along out in nature. It can really get to your feet and legs and back and knees. Why doesn’t this modern hospital complex know that? Why haven’t they realized that even people who are fit, need to sit, especially if they are going to send them on a trek to far corners without Sherpas and out to “the last dragon”, let alone taking the long journey back along the same route? Why isn’t there a hospitality desk with a map of the complex indicating where the Quick-Seat Chairs are located, or any seating? Just knowing there are seats and not dragons would be such a comfort. Don’t you agree?
Quick-Seat Chairs. Temporary Seating That Closes Itself