What fun on my bicycle today! Actually, I had fun on both the bicycles I ride. I commuted to work on two wheels, and, early in the morning, I had gotten out on the road bike. Since Saturday I've put a little over 50 miles on the road bike. I'm a little short of breath after climbing a hill, and, since I'm still not entirely confident in my recovery, I wonder: "Is that the disease, still in my lungs?" I'm sure the answer is no! I'm just far from the shape I was in before I got sick.

Speaking of lungs, I was talking to one of our congregation members who is recovering nicely from a collapsed lung. The recovery was very slow at first, however. She was in our Williamsburg hospital. We talked about our common experience of being hospitalized for lung ailments -- in a hospital that does not have a thoracic surgeon! It's a little scary.

The shortage of nurses is even more frightening. My conversation partner told me that, since the hospital is so short-staffed, the nurses were necessarily spending time with those in more dire shape than she, and only infrequently checking into her room. I had the same experience at Norfolk General, once I got to a regular room. Actually, I was kept in the Progressive Ventilator Care Unit for several days past the point I had been released to go to a regular room -- but they had no rooms available that were staffed! And I'm glad now that I only spent two days in a regular room. On all shifts there, I was cared for by LPNs. There were several RNs on the floor, and regularly one would hear over the intercom, "A nurse is needed in room ____." Meaning: an RN was needed to do a procedure that only an RN is authorized to do. So the RNs spent their days traveling from room to room when they were needed.

According to the wife of one of my cousins -- who teaches in a nursing school in Boston -- the nursing shortage is not because there is a shortage of people who would like to be nurses. Instead, there are not enough nursing schools to train them! In our area, Paul Trible was a prince of a guy when he closed the nursing school at Christopher Newport University, wasn't he?