If the employees are representative of the leadership at Harrison Medical Center – Harrison will be around long after most of us living today move on to frolic and ride the best horses, in that great rainbow in the sky.

Friday, 9 April 2010 I had an appointment with Melissa Mercogliano at Center for Orthopedic & Lymphatic Physical Therapy in Port Orchard for a leg wrap.

She wouldn’t touch the right leg. I was infected again. (I cannot wrap your leg when it is infected – get to a Prompt Care now!) I opted for the closest one, Harrison Port Orchard Urgent Care: – across the street from Melissa’s Port Orchard office.

There I met Pamela Starling, ARNP and Tiffany Campbell, MA and was treated to an amazing medical visit… a culture taken of the infected area – a first of all the times I’ve seen medical folks in Kitsap County for the same problem…Harrison Port Orchard Urgent Care’s Pamela Starling, ARNP took a culture.

Tiffany Campbell expertly and loosely wrapped my right leg, I had a prescription for an anti biotic I had not had before and went home with instructions on leg care until the culture developed in a few days and Pamela promised she would be back in touch.

Pamela called on Tuesday, the 13th – she had the culture results. It was a serious infection requiring a different antibiotic.

A problem was that the antibiotic in tablet form was incompatible with another drug taken therefore the antibiotic had to be administered intravenously …in a hospital.

Pamela called my primary physician and she called me about the concern and recommended I go to Harrison Bremerton’s ER. After some confusion there, I was admitted into the “M” ward. Hooked up with IV’s, I was fed two different antibiotics.

The first thing I noticed was the toilet height – child size and I laughed. What I didn’t realize until I sat down and got up for the first time is how smart Harrison was to listen to their physical therapists.

The height is PERFECT for helping patients ‘leg up’ (build muscle) in the legs simply by sitting down and getting up from the toilet.

Harrison helps patients help themselves maintain or gain muscle while a patient in the hospital. They know muscle utilizes oxygen better than flab and the biggest muscles in the body are the upper leg muscles.

For years, my mother was in and out as a heart patient at Harrison. I was used to the sparkling, spacious modern cardiac ward and had not remembered the older section. The Cardiac ward is quite different from the ward I was in.

Once I learned it was not a ward reserved for pulmonary patients, I relaxed and opened my laptop.
Thanks to my first roommate’s visiting computer whiz son and granddaughter I set up my laptop in the hospital