St. Joe's Hospital - Preface

There are 2 hospitals in the Joliet area at this time: Silver Cross Hospital on the east side of Joliet, and Provena St. Joseph Medical Center on the west side.

Provena St. Joseph Medical Center is also known as St. Joe’s, St. Joe’s Hospital, St. Joe’s Misdiagnosis Center and Voodoo Palace, and Oh My God No!, among other things.

Edward Hospital has wanted to build a hospital in Plainfield, and St. Joe’s is against it. They are concerned that all of the patients with money and good insurance will go there, leaving them with the poor and uninsured to care for, resulting in loss of income. They are worried that they won’t have enough money to stay in business.

Bobby's Story, Part 1

Before I tell you Bobby’s story, I think I should give you a little background information about myself.
Years ago, I moved back in with my mother. I had been on my own for quite a while, and I had become ill. I had been ill before, but this time it was bad, and I wasn’t getting any better. So, with her constant urging, along with everyone else’s, I moved back in with her, but only until I got better.
Well, I got better, but then she got sick. I stayed to take care of her, and the plan was that after she got better, I would move out. She got better, and the cycle repeated itself.
So, I stayed. She also needed help taking care of the house, and I didn’t like the idea of her being by herself in that big house, so it all seemed to work out.
Today we are both in kind of sad shape. She no longer drives, so I do all the driving for her.
Years ago she wanted to get a “weekend get-away” that she could go to on the weekends in the summer and relax. She ended up buying a little house trailer along a river about an hour and a half away from home. So, every weekend in the summer we go to the river. Me, my mother, our 6 year old border collie Missy, and our 4 year old Shih Tzu Kaylee.

FINALLY, BOBBY’S STORY!
FINDING BOBBY
It was Friday, the beginning of Memorial Day weekend, and we were headed to the river. It was the first big holiday weekend, so naturally it was cold and raining. It had been raining hard since we got up in the morning, and the wind was gusting and cold. Even though the weather was miserable, we still went to the river.
The driving conditions weren’t the greatest, to say the least. At times it was difficult for me to see out of the windshield, even though the windshield wipers were going as fast as they could trying to keep up with the rain.
It was just over an hour and a half into the trip when I made the final turn onto the road that would get us to the trailer. This road, like most of the roads along the way, was in the middle of farm country, so there was nothing around but empty fields.
I was concentrating on the road, trying to watch where we were going, when suddenly I saw something out of the corner of my eye. It was way off in the distance to the right in an empty field, and it was heading to the left. It was small, and I couldn’t make out what it was. I watched as it came across the field, disappeared in a ditch for a second, reappeared and crossed the road, disappeared in the ditch on the left side of the road, and then reappeared. I only saw it for a second when it came out of the ditch and headed off to the left. Later on, my mother said that she saw it also, and she didn’t know what it was either.
When I got to the area where I saw it cross the road, about a half mile from the trailer, I slowed the truck down and looked out of the window. I saw a little black dog, soaking wet, eating stubble or dead leaves or something in the field. The crops hadn’t come up yet, so there really wasn’t anything good out there for it to eat.
My heart sunk when I saw that. That poor little dog, out in the cold and wet, eating nature’s trash out in a muddy field. It was like somebody took a sledgehammer and hit me right in the gut.
I looked over at my mother, and she said “You want to go back?” She said it jokingly. She always said that when we saw a dog while we were traveling because I had always said that 2 dogs were enough, and I couldn’t handle a third.
Well, she said “You want to go back?”, and I didn’t say a word. Of course I was going back. I had to go back. I couldn’t leave that poor little thing out in the rain. Maybe if he had tags on his collar I could find his home and bring him home. Surely there was someone that was missing him.
We came to a cross street, so I turned around and headed back. My mother asked me if I was going back there, and I said that I couldn’t just leave that poor thing out there, maybe he had tags or some kind of ID.
I went back and he was still out there in the field. I pulled the truck over, got out and went to the front of the truck. He was far enough away from me that I couldn’t see if he had any tags or not. He looked up at me and I called him. He took a few steps toward me and stopped, so I called him again, “come here baby”. This went on a few times, so I crouched down and called him again. He came farther toward me than he had been, so I held out my arms and called him again. He came running through the ditch, down one side and up the other, and headed toward me.
I thought “OK, now I can check and see if he has any tags.” I thought that he would come up to me and stop, and I’d check him for tags or some other type of identification. I thought wrong. He came running up to me and jumped up into my arms! My natural reaction was to hold on to him. When he jumped, he jumped up to my right shoulder. I automatically put my right forearm under his backside and my left hand in the middle of his back.
I couldn’t believe it. One second I’m crouched down calling this little dog, and the next I’m standing there with this poor thing in my arms. I had to stand there for a second and try to get everything that I was feeling straight. He had his front paws and his head on top of my right shoulder, and I swear that I could feel him holding on to me. Then I felt the little dog himself. He was soaking wet and shivering like mad. The poor thing was freezing. My left hand could feel the wet hair and bones. I could feel his spine and his ribs through all of that hair. The little guy was starved!
For some strange reason, the name “Greyfriar’s Bobby” came to mind. Maybe subconsciously I saw something in common between this little dog and the story of Greyfriar’s Bobby. That’s why I named him Bobby.
So there I was, standing at the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere in the pouring rain, holding on to this little dog that I decided to call Bobby. And I knew I was done for. That little guy stole my heart in those few seconds, and there was nothing that I could do about it. I knew he was coming home with us, and that’s where he was going to stay.
I went to my mom’s window and I told her that the dog didn’t have a collar or tags. I also told her that I could feel his spine and ribs with my hand, and that he was nothing but skin and bones. I asked her what she wanted to do, and she said that we should take him down to the river and dry him off and get some food into him. That saved me the trouble of telling her that that is what we were going to do.
I got in the truck and I tried to put him down on the seat next to me, but that little guy had a grip on me and he wouldn’t let go. Surprisingly, our other 2 dogs only carried on a little bit. They barked a little, gave him a good sniff, and left him alone. I ended up driving the rest of the way to the river with my left hand and holding on to him with my right.

Bobby's Story, Part 2

AT THE RIVER
We got to the river and I got everyone inside and everything unloaded from the truck that had to go inside. Once everything was put away and everyone settled in, I grabbed a towel and started to dry Bobby off. While I was drying him off, mom scrambled an egg for him. After the egg had cooled enough for him to eat, she fed it to him while I was still drying him off. That poor little thing practically inhaled that egg. After a while, when it looked like the egg wasn’t going to make him sick, we started to slowly give him dry dog food.
After he had eaten a little bit, I looped one of the dog’s leashes around his neck and took him outside to go to the bathroom. The rules down there are that all the dogs were supposed to be leashed when they were outside. And, I didn’t want the little guy to run into the street. He walked with me to the spot where I take the dogs to go, his tail just wagging away. He squatted down and went, and the poor little thing had diarrhea. When he was done he looked up at me with his tail still wagging, and we went back to the house. I know he couldn’t be feeling all that good, considering he had diarrhea, but that tail kept wagging. After I had taken him out a couple of more times, and he still had diarrhea, I gave him half a lomotil and that stopped the diarrhea.
After everyone was settled in and it looked like the dogs were going to get along, I told mom that I was going into town to get a collar for him. When I got back from town I had his collar, and a food dish, and a toy, and a cage, and a rug for his cage. I think mom got the idea that we were going to keep him.
That night we could hear the coyotes howling from around the general area where we found him. Luckily we got to him before the coyotes did.
We went to bed that evening, and about 10 minutes after we went to bed, he started crying. I didn’t know what it was at first, because he sounds just like a human baby when he cries. I took him out of his cage and held him just like a baby, his front paws on my right shoulder. He was shivering hard, like he was scared. It was warm in the trailer, so I knew it couldn’t be from the cold.
I held him and petted him, stroking him from his head to his tail. As I petted him, I thought of what it had to be like for him, all of a sudden being all alone with no food or shelter. He must have been terrified, and that’s probably why he was crying. He was afraid of the dark, afraid of being alone; afraid of what horrors might be out there.
I stood there for a good hour, petting him and talking softly to him. After that hour, I could feel him start to relax. He had stopped shivering, and I could feel his muscles relax. He curled his front paws underneath him, laid his head on my shoulder, and started to go to sleep. I let him sleep for a little while, and then I put him in his cage. I got on my hands and knees and petted him while he was in his cage until he went to sleep, and then I went to bed. Bright and early the next morning he started to cry, so I took him out and he went. So ended out first night together, neither one of us getting much sleep.
We spent the rest of the weekend letting him get used to us and his new surroundings. It took him a while to get use to everything. I got the impression that he was glad to have a new home, but he was being cautious about us, like he was a little afraid of us. I could see him watching how we treated the other dogs, and I think that put him at ease a little. Even though he might have been a little weary of us and the situation, he kept that little tail wagging.

Bobby's Story, Part 3

COMING HOME
The weekend was over and it was time to head home. I got everything and everyone loaded into the truck started out. Our boarder collie, Missy, was in the back seat, and the two little ones were in the front seat, in between mom and me. Our other Shih Tzu, Kaylee, was lying on the seat next to mom, and Bobby was lying on the seat next to me. He wasn’t as restless as I thought he would be. I talked to him and petted him a little as I drove, and that calmed him down to the point that he went to sleep. He slept most of the way home.
We got home, and it was a new experience for him to get used to. I could see him watching the other dogs, and he kind of mimicked them, took his cues from them. Naturally he had to give the whole house a good sniff. Taking him outside was a new experience for him too. I kept him on the leash and walked the yard with him. He more or less followed the other dogs around, going where they went, sniffing what they sniffed, etc. And yes, I did have to go to Petsmart and get him new things for this house. I tried to get him the same stuff I had gotten him down at the river. I got him the same kind of cage, rug for the cage, etc.
We decided that it would be a good idea to have our veterinarian check him out, so we called him the next morning. We took him in and had him checked out, sort of like a physical. The vet checked him for a chip, and luckily for us there wasn’t one.
The vet said that he was still a pup and that he still had a baby tooth that was stuck. His teeth needed a good cleaning after eating all the leaves and grass that he had been eating to stay alive. The vet weighed him and he weighed 11 pounds. He told us that he was very malnourished, and that we should feed him double portions of food. He also told us to have him groomed and to bring him back in a week and he would “fix” him and clean his teeth and extract the baby tooth that was hung up.
We brought him in a week later, after being groomed and fed double portions, and he weighed 10 pounds. A week of eating double portions of food, along with treats, and he weighed a pound less that when we first brought him in. The only reason I can think of for him weighing less than a week before was that it was all the hair that was giving him some weight.
The vet got him all fixed up. He took care of his teeth and gave him his shots. Then he told us that he didn’t think he would have lasted another day out in the wild eating leaves and grass. He also told us that he thought it would be touch and go on weather he would have lasted the week with us, being as malnourished as he was. But he did make it, and the vet gave him a good going over again and said that he would be alright, and all his vital signs were good.

Bobby's Story, Part 4

BOBBY TODAY
Today Bobby is alive and very well. He gets dog food with half a hot dog cut up in it, or some other goody mixed in with it, just like the other 2 dogs. He gets treats throughout the day when he comes in from outside, just like the other 2 dogs. And he gets a little something from the table when we’re eating. I don’t feed him from the table, but mom does. He has a way of begging that’s hard to resist.
He and Kaylee play and chase each other around the house during the day. In the evening the both of them can be found lying on my mother’s bed with her watching TV. When I have all of them outside, I will sometimes let him off of his leash, and he’ll run around with Missy.
At times I think I should have named him “Happy” or “Piss and Vinegar”. That little guy’s tail is always wagging and it seems like there is always a smile on his face. I can go outside for 5 minutes and come back, and he runs up and jumps up at me with his little tail going. Every morning when I let him out of his cage he runs up to me, wanting to kiss me and be petted. He’s always happy to see everybody, I’ve never heard him growl at anybody. And he’s always ready to play. I’ve never seen a dog with so much energy. Mom says that God sent him to us as a gift; that He sent us a little angel, and I think she might be right.
The first few months that we had him, he would cry when I put him to bed. Then I would have to take him out of his cage and hold him until he relaxed and started to go to sleep. I would put him back in his cage, and he would sleep for the rest of the night.
One sad thing about him was the first couple of months that we had him he would take a nap and start dreaming. Then I guess the dream would turn bad, and he would let out a horrible scream. He would wake up screaming and come running over to one of us. We would hold him until he calmed down, and he would be alright for the rest of the day. Fortunately this only happened a few times, and he hasn’t had any unpleasant dreams since.
Just recently he has started to spend some time on our laps. It used to be that he would jump up on us, lick our faces a little bit and then jump down. Now he’ll get up on our laps and go to sleep. I think that he has really started to trust us, and I hope he knows that we’ll never let anything bad happen to him again. I think he realizes that he has a home for the rest of his life. He will never be abandoned or discarded. He will always have a warm bed to sleep in, good food to eat, treats to eat, someone to play with, and people that will love, protect, and care for him. And pretzels. Mom will always give him pretzels.