Thanks for the memories, KRMC

During last summer's vacation in Whitefish, I experienced every traveler's nightmare. One year ago this month, I found myself lying on a gurney looking up at the anesthesiologist who was about to put me to sleep for emergency surgery - thousands of miles west of big-name medical centers I was familiar with.

So began my three-week stint as a patient of Kalispell Regional Medical Center. And so ended my long-held notion that first-rate care comes only in the metropolis.

Before I say why I've replaced a smug preference for big Eastern medical centers with profound gratitude for a small Western one, I'll say how I became an expert in contrasts. One month prior to being admitted to Kalispell Regional, I had had surgery in North Carolina to remove a bit of intestine that would periodically become twisted, causing both pain and inconvenience for one who spends as much time as possible on airplanes headed west. My first surgery was scheduled to allow time for me to recover enough to spend last September in Whitefish.

When I was admitted to the UNC affiliate hospital in Raleigh a year ago in August, I knew exactly what to expect because I was a patient in the very hospital where my husband had practiced medicine for three decades. After surgery I was assigned a room on a crowded G.I. floor where a "team" of RNs, LPNs, and CNAs commandeered my progress from bed, to chair, to corridor - where on day three, I took my place in the lineup of other post-op patients, shuffling up and down, trailing IV's. On day six, when I moved more like an upright Homo sapiens than one of our crouching ancestors, I was released into the care of my husband.

But not before my Raleigh surgeon informed me that he'd noticed another area in my abdomen that might cause trouble down the road. Hopeful that "down the road" meant years from now, three weeks later my husband and I headed for Whitefish. Exactly four days later, we were speeding down Highway 93, bound for the Kalispell ER, where a quick-thinking medic treated my pain while another medic summoned a surgeon.

What happened next my husband relayed to me in bits when I was able to grasp just how sick I'd been and how a Kalispell surgeon, my deus ex machina, had resolved a life-threatening crisis. By that time I was also able to see that Kalispell Regional, with its sunny halls and art-filled walls, was a far cry from the dull, gray scene of my Raleigh detention.

But it's not the contrast in hospital decor that has us reliving, play by play, the 2010 experience that has gradually restored my health. Rather it's the contrast in the attentiveness of doctors and nurses - here versus there. Press a call-button in Raleigh and someone would show up - eventually - usually at the prodding of a family member. For in big medical centers, it seems the staff must spend about as much time hunched over laptops documenting patient progress as they do promoting it.

Press a call-button here and someone appears within seconds! Granted, the nurses joked that requests spoken in Southernese were tough to understand over the intercom, but the Kalispell novelties went way beyond promptness. My surgeon would actually sit down in my hospital room as he reviewed my progress - then refer to me by name rather than by room number when he discussed my case. Somehow, Kalispell Regional has managed to combine state of the art medicine with old-school solicitude.

As I recovered last year, I heard journalist Christopher Hitchens tell a talk-show host that he'd just been "deported to the land of the gravely ill." Last August, that line was an apt description of my own plight. This year, however, I've been repatriated among the survivors of near catastrophe - thanks to the skill of a very fine surgeon and to the dedication of a whole staff of nurses.

Nan Miller is professor emerita at Meredith College in Raleigh, N.C., and a part-time resident of Whitefish.