Climbing Every Staircase at the Cleveland Clinic

So, here’s another story from “Bob and his Hospital Exploits.”

I’ve been a patient at the Cleveland Clinic since 1969. So, for more than half of the 102 years that the clinic has existed. Haha. I realized that I’ve been seen as a patient in 8 of the 9 buildings at the Cleveland Clinic main campus.

« UPDATE: I’ve now been in every building, since I was placed in a special negative pressure room in the M Building in November 2023 as I was recovering from COVID. All 9 buildings! »

So, here is the story:

Linda and I were getting ready to go hiking around in the Alps in September 2023 (Yep! The Swiss and French Alps!). So, I had been training as best I could beforehand. Hiking here and there.

Back in August 2023, I was seeing my nephrologist in the Glickman Tower. I decided, "Hey, here are a lot of mountains to climb at the Cleveland Clinic!" So, I decided to hike up every building at Cleveland Clinic's main campus.

I started with the Glickman Tower: 11 Floors, up and down. I then went and had a late lunch/early dinner in the hospital cafeteria. I can’t count how many meals I’ve had in that room.

Then I hiked up the original hospital stairs, 11 floors. This is the place I visited every year for surgeries from the age 5 to 13, as they reconstructed my kidney and urinary system. They saved one kidney from damage, but the other one was too far gone by the time they caught the congenital defect. Interestingly, the banisters in this building are old-timey wood. All the other banisters are steel.

I hiked up Building M - 13 floors. The M building houses the children's hospital, but when I was a kid, the children's hospital was only *one floor* (floor 7) of the original hospital. This is the only building I hadn’t been patient in. But I climbed it. Why? Because it was there!

I climbed up building H, where I was a patient when I had to have my colon removed. 13 floors. I stopped on the colorectal floor, to once again admire the work these nurses do on that floor. Yuk. They have to deal with patient poop 24-7. That, friends, is a calling.

I climbed up building G. Another 13 floors. I was really feeling it by now, and I wanted to quit. But I knew what my goal was and, ugh, I was going to succeed! G Building is where I spent the entire month of August in 2018 because my autoimmune disease had attacked my one good kidney so badly that the nephrologists had to micromanage my blood as they hoped my kidney would rebound before it failed completely. A whole month, in a hospital room. I felt fine, but I was told that my blood was very sick. Weird. I am now, sadly, in Stage 4 Kidney Failure, almost to Stage 5, when I will have to start dialysis. I’m hoping the kidney will hold on for a few more years!

I then made my way over to the Crile Building to climb that pyramid-shaped beauty. This is where see my rheumatologist, the doctor helping me fight my autoimmune disease. I had trouble finding the stairs. I sneaked back into the patient exam room area and found them. Up I went! I got halfway up and went out into the patient waiting room and rested in one of the chairs. There were no patients there. Hmm. I guess everybody’s gone home. I proceeded to climb up to the 12th floor.

I was taking a picture out the window, looking out at the rest of the campus I had just climbed, when I heard a voice behind me. “Sir? What are you doing here?” I turned around to see a member of the Cleveland Clinic Police looking very seriously at me.

“Uh, just taking a picture,” was my dumb answer.

He said, “The building is closed. I will have to escort you out of the building.”

I replied, “Oh, I was just climbing the stairs of every building on campus. I didn’t know this one had closed.”

His eyebrow raised, looking at me, completely soaked in sweat. He asked, “Are you a patient here?” (Maybe, he thought, of the Psych Ward?)

“Yes, I was seeing my doctor over in the Glickman Tower. But, no, I’m not a patient in the hospital at this time, though I’ve been a patient here since I was five years old!”

“Okay. You’ll have to come with me down to the first floor.”

As we entered the elevator, I said, “Oh well, I was hoping to hike back down the stairs.”

The police officer was not amused. “Where are you from?”

“Canton.”

“Where did you park?”

I replied, “Parking Deck 2, over across the passenger bridge” as the elevator arrived at the first floor.

He pressed the button to take me back up to floor 2, which is the floor on which the bridge is accessed. “Well, you need to go directly to the parking deck.”

And I did.

I was tempted, as I passed it, to go hike up the Taussig Cancer Center building like I had planned (where I had seen a hematologist), but I thought the better.

And I was sort of glad he made me stop. I was very tired.

But I was very glad. And I prayed, “Thank you, Lord, for allowing me to be healthy enough to do this crazy thing today.”