MRI's, Piano's, and WWI-Beware of nurses bearing needles!

This has been a week of many tests. Today was the bone marrow previously and graphically described followed by a 2 hour MRI with an injection of dye. The MRI area is in the bowels of the hospital complex and is located next to the Gamma Knife.

Anyone know what that is? It is a machine that is used to operate on inoperable brain tumors. It focuses intense gamma radiation from a hemisphere around a patients head. All rays are focused thru the head into that exact spot where the bad tumor is. Not many in the country.

Anyway, I have never enjoyed the MRI area because it had such a dismal look out the windows at basement level; until today, that is! Now it is one of the most beautiful areas! Right outside the windows they built a garden area maintained by the local garden club. It has small tables and seats and a water fountain. It now accesses the new cancer center first floor via a flowing set of steps and ramps. Artwork is plentiful.

These architects hit a home run! Wow!

While Deb was in her MRI I explored. Suddenly I heard classical piano playing. Following the stairs, I saw one of the red-shirted valet parking young men sitting at a Steinway piano in the new cancer center playing his heart out. I sat next to him and enjoyed the music! When he finished the first piece everyone started clapping. I looked up in to the 12 story atrium and saw people on every floor hanging over the glass rails listening and clapping. My picture was taken straight up  after most people had moved away from the railing.

Another couple had sat down beside the pianist and after he left we chatted. He is 65 and has smoldering myeloma. He has never had the trauma of any lesions in his body yet is under constant watch in case he gets an outbreak. Their names are Don and Anita. Turns out they reside in north Arkansas and Don has a Comanche 250  airplane; in fact, a 1958 model, the eighth off the production line. They had once lived in Macon, Ga where my grandparents had lived.

As a kid hanging out at the Macon Airport, I had been around Comanche number 1 used on the photos on magazine covers. A Dr William Holden in Macon had owned that plane. Blue fuselage and yellow wings. He was a WWI navy seaplane pilot; yes, I said ONE. He often flew his Comanche on long overwater flights. Each country he has visited  was represented by a small flag on the side of his airplane, and he had many flags! That really impressed me a a young man! Before he died, Dr Holden gave my late uncle Hal the WWI leather flying helmet he had used. It was very thick leather, perhaps 1/2" thick and covered head, neck, and shoulder tops. Apparently, it was very cold!

Later  in 1972 I flew a Comanche with the late Bob Day who ran Herbert Smart Airport in Macon. We flew it down to Dawson, Ga and back. Bob was a friend of my father and uncle Hal.