Olga was my nurse. Removal of a catheter caused urinary retention and brought me to Cooperman Barnabas. I knew then as I know now that in the grand scheme of what goes on at Cooperman Barnabas how relatively trivial my situation was. People & children were enduring much more pain than I was. Yet I feared that this catheter was going to be life-crushing for me. If it became required, I could not imagine how I could become used to it. How I could play tennis or bowl, or ride my bicycle or simply walk in the park with it. Just several days before I felt healthy and free as a forty-year-old man.

In that hospital bed, I felt that I was beginning a limited life of an eighty-year-old man. Olga could have easily given me the people-here-are-much-worse-off-than-you line maybe a little smile and gone off to her next patient. She didn't. She took the time to listen. Reminded me not to assume the worst. Olga kindly listened to this miserable frustrated man caught between doctors' opinions. I will always be grateful to her.