 COLORADO 100K LIVES CAMPAIGN Littleton resident Rod Street spent 45 years working in sales and engineering, helping water treatment facilities run more smoothly. Today, he’s retired with Annie, his wife of 55 years.Together they enjoy the fruits of their labor, spending time reading, gardening and participating daily in water aerobics.
Streetalso spends time each week helping his local hospital run more smoothly. For the past four years, he has volunteered at Littleton Adventist Hospital, which is part of the Centura Health system. “I deliver the mail every Tuesday,” says Street. “With the recent renovation, I can tell you that means a lot of walking. I’m thankful for a job that let’s me contribute.” It was Street’s recent visit to Littleton as a patient that has him most thankful. Streetwas a patient at Littleton for a hip replacement, an operation that had him in the hospital recovering for five days. The morning he was to leave the hospital, he was sitting in a chair, while Annie was packing his things. Suddenly, he began to experience chest pain. “I had had it before, while mowing the lawn and things like that, so I thought it would pass,” he said. A nurse walked into the room and observed Street’s declining condition. “When I went into the room, everything just clicked,” said Shelly Burkett, RN. “I thought, ‘This is not the person I know.’ There had been a huge change in his appearance and his abilities, and he was very pale.” Immediately, Shelly activated the hospital’s Rapid Response Team which determined Rod was having a heart attack. They got Street into the catheter lab within minutes and deployed a stent to help the blood flow past the blockage in his heart. The incident kept him in the hospital for a few days more, but eventuallyStreet and his wife got back to their lives. He says he still thinks about what might have happened if Shelly hadn’t noticed his condition that day and let him leave the hospital. “I doubt Annie would’ve been able to get me back in time,” he says. “I can’t speak highly enough about the people at Littleton and how quickly they responded. They were there in an instant, and that saved my life.” |
