Patient Stories
I Could’ve Died!
It was the first day of the Charles Schwab Cup championship, at the Sonoma Valley Golf Club, and celebrity golfer Joey Sindelar felt a little short of breath. “I remembered saying to my caddie, ‘John, are these hills getting to you?’” The caddie said “No.” Sindelar thought maybe it had been all the flying he’s been doing recently, between a couple of tours in Texas then back home to Central New York State and on to Ohio and then to Sonoma. He wasn’t feeling pain, just light-headedness and difficulty breathing. “It felt like I was in Denver,” he says. He… Read More
Former SVH Nurses Help Deliver Their Own
New Year’s Grandchild
For Paul Crowe and Jenna Barkley, giving birth to baby Jackson, on New Year’s Eve at Sonoma Valley Hospital, was like having him born at home. Both Jenna and Paul’s mothers, Debbie Cohen and Vicki Crowe, had worked here, at different times, as labor and delivery nurses, and Paul himself was born here. For the family, the birth was not just a personal example of the outstanding care patients receive at Sonoma Valley Hospital, but a miracle. As Vicki tells the story, Paul, when he was in his early teens, had been diagnosed at the hospital with osteo-sarcoma. His doctors… Read More
Quality of Life Restored
Robert Reguera did not want to move any further into his seventies with a beautiful, younger wife, and be anything other than the vibrant, active partner she deserves. “I’d waited 30 years for her,” he says, with a radiant smile, “I didn’t want her to have to do for me. I wanted to do for myself.” He came to a point this summer, in Hawaii, when he couldn’t “do.” He was in the surf, and his knee gave way – it had been painful for some time – and he was embarrassed to find he couldn’t get to shore without… Read More
Helen Fernandez and the Skilled Nursing
Makeover Story
In 2008, Helen Fernandez, a fit, energetic 80-some year old, became a patient in the Skilled Nursing Unit of Sonoma Valley Hospital after a fall. “I wasn’t sick,” she “I was broken.” She spent 31 days confined to Room 109, during which time...Read More