St. John's makes makes transition easier to having child in hospital

To the Editor:

On Wednesday Jan. 25, my wife and I received a call from the Libby High School. Our daughter was not feeling well and wanted to come home, no big deal , it's that time of year.

When I picked her up I could see the pain and concern written on her face, I knew this was not an ordinary sick day. She's a teenager right, what could be wrong? I decided to take her to Prompt Care just to be safe. A phone call to my wife and we exchanged places, as she wanted to be with her sick daughter.

A few minutes later my wife called and said that I need to get to the hospital, my daughter had a collapsed lung. Before I could even walk through the door of the emergency room, my daughter had a tube in her chest and was in recovery. My wife explained how when she arrived at Prompt Care, my daughter was immediately taken to the emergency room, where EKG's and other tests were administered. No problems located, it's probably just a chest spasm, growing pains of a teenager.

Dr. Jay Maloney wanted to take a chest x-ray, just to be thorough. We've all been there, another test to find nothing, another bill, right? Not this time! The x-ray clearly showed my 14-year-old daughter's left lung was over one third collapsed. The diagnosis, "Spontaneous Pneumothorax," a little research on our part showed that this occurs about nine thousand times a year in the Unites States, not exactly common.

Our experience here at St. John's Lutheran Hospital was second to none. Expert care in the emergency room by Dr. Jay Maloney, surgeon Dr. Lance Ercanbrack, Jay Moody and the rest of the staff, made the transition to having a child in the hospital easier. During our five nights and six days stay, we were treated like family, rather than customers, routine and cordial visits by the staff, liberal visitation, all of which helped with the healing process. There were so many excellent staff members, I wish I had written their names down; they really deserve to be thanked individually.

We left St. John's feeling truly blessed to have this quality of medical care at our disposal.

Boyd and Shala White