On Monday, I spent the day in Baltimore on the transplant unit at University of MD medical center. They’ve really renovated it since I interviewed for a nursing job there over seven years ago when it seemed kind of medieval and tortuous. I visited my friend Astra who got a kidney about 6 months ago and is still slowly recovering from that with various complications (she’s been in/out of the hospital dealing with stuff that crops up). I haven’t seen her in a long, long time, so I was very happy to see her on Monday.
I got to roam the hospital a bit during my visit and found these respirator vending machines? They also can vend n95 masks. Interesting.
You can also get salads (and chia pudding) in a jar from a vending machine. That seems nice, though I didn’t order lunch from this machine.
Parking is always an issue in downtown Baltimore. Astra gave me specific instructions to park in a particular parking garage and while I pulled up, there was an enormous sign that said – visitor parking available after 2pm and as it was well before 2pm, I drove past the parking garage and then spilled onto the streets of Baltimore without my GPS buddy. So I found parking right by driving around aimlessly until I found a surface lot at Camden Yards with no posted price and it also said permit parking only, but it let me pull a ticket and it was about half full. So I had no idea if I was going to pay $97 for a day of parking and both Astra and the unit secretary yelled at me and told me I should have disregarded the enormous no visitor sign parking and needed to pay only $9 for parking, but then I was like – well I didn’t want to take a space from an actual patient! Anyways, I paid only $15 for a day’s worth of parking and I learned something about Babe Ruth.
