It is by the Grace of God and the expertise of medical personnel at Medina Memorial Hospital’s ER that I am writing this column.

The night of Oct. 17 I thought a cough I had for a week was finally letting up. Then about 10 p.m., it worsened again. I had decided earlier in the day that after the weekend, I would go the ER. By midnight, I wondered if I could make it until morning and then I’d have to go then. I was coughing so bad I couldn’t get my breath.

At 2 a.m., I woke my daughter Robin and told her to take me to the ER. Phone already in hand, she called an ambulance. I protested, but she said they were on their way. I went out and sat in a kitchen chair by the door to wait for them.

It was only minutes before they were out front and two paramedics rushed in and immediately put an oxygen mask over my face and gave me a shot of what I was later told was Albuterol. Then they proceeded to take me to the ambulance.

At the ER, nurses came running at me on both sides with IVs and that is the last I remember. Until four hours later. I opened my eyes and the doctor asked if I knew where I was. I told him Medina Memorial Hospital, and he said, “If you hadn’t done just what you did, you wouldn’t be here now.”

I didn’t think much about that until later, when I learned if my daughter had taken me, I probably would have not made it to the hospital. I was in heart failure.

Then I tried to end it in the ER, they tell me. My blood pressure soared to 286 over something, a number unheard of to survive or not have a stroke. Robin said she heard them say, “We’re losing her,” and the doctor asked if I had a DNR.

Well, I’ve been told more than once I’m stubborn, and I don’t “get lost” that easily.

I was diagnosed with Acute Hypoxemic Respiratory Failure, with pneumonia. My lungs were filling with fluid and my heart was shutting down because of the strain from coughing.

I am indeed lucky and very grateful to be here.

And it’s due to those paramedics and the team in the ER at Medina Memorial Hospital.

I spent three days in the hospital and came home, a little shaky and with not as clear vision. As it turns out, the surge in blood pressure damaged my retina. Added to that, I was already dealing with double vision.

I can’t drive until I get my eyes straightened out, but I can cook, talk and write. How fortunate I am at 88 to have a job where I get to sit down, talk to people I love and write their stories.

And I have three friends who have stepped up offering to take me to my interviews until my eyes get straightened out. One can’t get much luckier than that.

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It was a coincidence I ended up in the ER at Medina hospital a few days ago. I had recently asked Scott Robinson, director of Marketing at Orleans Community Health, if he could gather some information for me on the ER, as I’d like to do a story on their increased number of patients and capabilities, not dreaming I would become one of those statistics.

More and more people are realizing the benefits of the ER at Medina Memorial Hospital. Robinson sent me information saying in July they saw 825 patients, the busiest month in years. Throughout 2025, they saw 8,473 patients. They are on track to see more than 8,600 this year, he said. Both of those numbers are at least 10-year highs.

Medina’s ER is not just a “stable and transfer” facility any more. Currently, the ER transfers only four percent of its patients. Those are ones they are able to stabilize before being transferred.

That brings to mind another time the ER at Medina Memorial Hospital came to my rescue. A little more than a year ago, I fell flat on my face at Hospice. My glasses cut my face above the eye, laying open the bone. Being on blood thinners, the blood was flowing. The ambulance driver asked if I wanted to go to Strong or ECMC, and I told him Medina. He said I needed to go to a hospital which had a plastic surgeon, as that was the nastiest wound he had seen. I insisted and he took me to Medina.

Today, there is no sign of a scar above my eye. It happened to be just under my eyebrow and a doctor in the ER at Medina Memorial Hospital glued it.

If it weren’t for Medina Memorial Hospital, the nearest facility to receive medical attention is at least 30 minutes away, and for many the outcome could be disastrous, Robinson said.

One such case is the Rev. Tom Gardner of Knowlesville. In late December 2014, he had a heart attack.

“My first stop was the ER in Medina, or I wouldn’t have made it to Buffalo General,” he said. “The long days and nights and weeks in the ICU, Buffalo General and rehab unit at Medina Memorial Hospital ended when I returned home on Jan. 13, 2015.”

The Rev. Gardner said in a sermon he preached Feb. 22, 2015, “I survived by the grace of God.”

And I’m sure another big factor was the ER at Medina Memorial Hospital – only minutes away.