He lay in the waiting room for hours without being even looked at by a doctor or nurse. Finally he regained consciousness and after being told how long he had been there-got up and left the hospital and went home. At that time he was in his early 50's and in spite of this incident lived to be 81 years old when he died in his sleep.
My father also died at 81, just four weeks before he would have been 82. He had gone on disability in his mid-fifties because of arthritis which made him almost unable to stand up from a chair at one time. My mother told me twenty years after he went on disability that the family doctor had told him to get his affairs in order because he wouldn’t live to be 60. He was a carpenter and he remodeled their house when he was in his seventies and at 75 was as loose limbed as a teenage boy. Doctors also claimed he had emphysema but he was using a wheelbarrow and shovel to move dirt up until he was near 80.