The nurse radiated good will. She smiled brilliantly and with compassion just as she jabbed my epidermis in a thoroughly unprotected place.Finished, she cocked her head pleasantly and looked into my eyes in a gesture that told me I was an utterly brave patient, without whimper. This of course was truth. It was also my re-introduction to the miracles of modern medicine after an all too brief sabbatical. I’ll admit that hospital stories over lunch rank somewhere below blizzard forecasts and bank bailouts in public popularity. Like a few million others, I have a bittersweet attachment to hospitals and the other agencies of mercy that accept my Medicare card. On one hand I treasure the skills of today’s surgeons, the breezy optimism of the family doctors and the end-to-end crusades to upgrade patient care hospital cooking .I was grateful for all this. I was touched to be granted a farewell kiss by my wife as I was being wheeled into a large room. En route I flashed back to hospital scenes of earlier times. They were sieges. I remembered my urologist in clipped professional tones advising the nurse of the penetrating power of various probes and spears he needed to remedy a peculiarly male condition. They had numbered all of the spears. I remembered shuddering when he called out ’28,’ the dreaded ’28.’So now I was to undergo an angiogram where they inject dye into the arterial system and x-ray its passage, looking for potential blockage of the kind I experienced years ago. A pillow was placed expertly under my head. A nurse smiled confidently. Large white objects materialized above my head, part of the apparatus. It was going to be an ordeal. Other people appeared in the room. There was bustling about. Time ran on. Voices mingled. I wanted this to begin. I waited for the surgeon to arrive to join the crowd. More time. The surgeon had to be delayed.Right about then the surgeon’s masked face appeared. ‘When will you start,’ I asked, trying not to sound annoyed. ‘When does the sedation begin?”We’re done,’ he said. ‘You’re clear. Congratulations.’He was five feet away all the time, and never had to use the dreaded ’28.’Go here to read other Jim Klobuchar Changing Aging Posts.