Home is the place I want to be.

A chest pain puts me in the hospital for four days and nothing medical is found. But I have thoughts.

All my art can be found on Instagram @klonskyart.

Upon arriving home last night from a four night hospital stay, my L.A. pal Rene sent me an old Talking Heads video.

“Home is the place I want to be,” sings David Byrne.

Truer words were never sung.

It was a strange pain in the chest Friday night that had me wake Anne up and have her drive me to Northwestern Memorial twenty minutes away.

I have a thing about chest pains ever since a heart attack in 2000.

Note: Chest pains that demand a hospital are best done by calling an ambulance, advice I stupidly did not follow.

After several nights and what seemed like a hundred blood draws, nuclear scans and stress tests I was sent home with nothing found.

That’s fine. Home is the place I want to be.

There’s a level of frustration going through all that and finding nothing.

My high school buddy, Dr. Dan Morhaim wrote to say, “Not finding bad things can be a good outcome too.”

Plus, we know our bodies if something isn’t right. I had a simple cough two years ago that led to a CT scan that found a tumor on my kidney. The cough saved my life.

A case of Covid a couple of weeks ago added to my awareness of things going on in my body that don’t seem right.

Caution seems right these days.

“They” don’t have enough information of the effects of Covid post infection.

Upon arriving, doctors found worrisome signs and elevated levels of stuff, enough to want me admitted and tested.

Patient care by Northwestern’s staff of nurses and everyone on my floor was incredible. Many went through the worst of the Covid upsurges. Some got Covid themselves.

I can’t say enough good things about them.

But a hospital stay is not something I wanted.

Did I mention?

Home is where I want to be.

Note: I am extremely fortunate to have my teacher (not-free) retirement health insurance.

I have no idea what Northwestern is charging for all those medical services I used, but my final bill will be relatively affordable.

Too many others of our people are not as fortunate.

We need national healthcare.

And then there was this news I read as I was laying in bed on the tenth floor surrounded by million dollar Gold Coast skyscraper condos.

Northwestern is cheating us by charging the government for poor and indigent patients they do not provide care for.

My friend, nurse and patient advocate Erin Raether, tells me, “Not surprising…..and they make their patients fill out like 15 pages, plus a pile of documents, to “prove” how poor they are in order to get that charity care.”

As John Prine says,