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Saturday, February 25, 2006 12:42 PM 

There I was - lying in bed at Strong Memorial Hospital while my heart was doing it's Atrial Fibrillation flip-flop.  Not long after I was checked in, another patient was wheeled in next to me.  The gentleman was in his late 80's and had the same condition I did - Atrial Fibrillation.  Actually - he was in better shape than I, and had apparently already converted back to normal rhythm on his own - I was due for another 12 hours of flip-flop before they applied the paddles to my recalcitrant heart.

Shortly after my roommate checked in Val showed up to keep me company.  We actually spent a nice evening (if you can call being in a hospital emergency room with your heart going splat bump thump nice) reading and relaxing on the hospital bed - hoping that my heart would convert on it's own.

As Val and I sat on the bed reading, my roommate - Mr. Stanley - received a parade of visitors - nurses, doctors, his son, x-ray technicians, etc.  We couldn't actually see Mr. Stanley - we only heard him through the curtain.  What we slowly came to realize as we sat there was that Mr. Stanley was the epitome of the book "How to Win Friends and Influence People".  Despite the obviously uncomfortable situation, each person visiting Mr. Stanley was greeted with a smile, and he asked their name right off - repeating it a couple of times in the first few sentences to be sure he had it right.  He'd then ask them where they were from originally (a favorite question of both Mr. Carnegie and one of my other great mentors Boaz Rauschwerger).   They'd talk happily about their origins, and Mr. Stanley would always find something in common with them - a story to tell, or a time he'd visited their home place.  At the end he had them all eating out of his palm - they were his best friend, and he knew them all by name.  He happily called his wife and related to her all the new friends he'd made - almost nothing about his medical condition at all.  He rememered all their names - where they were from.   I was amazed at his ability to remember and keep it all in his head - on the high side of 80 and under a fair amount of stress.

Turns out Mr. Stanley still runs his own company - working about 6-7 hours a day.  He's been doing it for years.  I decided to find out more about Mr. Stanley after the hospital sent us off to separate rooms for further attention.  More about that later

I decided that I would look up Mr. Stanley after

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