A funny thing happened to me on vacation. I wish I could tell you that I was on an exotic archaeological expedition to China or a glamorous canoe voyage to Rapa Nui. But it would be a big lie.

What happened was that I started to lose my balance as if I were on the deck of a ship in a storm. My daughter took me to a doctor, and he sent me to the hospital for the first time in 82 years. My vascular plumbing was clogged up. They gave me a thorough overhaul. Three surgeries in four days. I also got an oil change, two blood transfusions, and some spare parts, a pacemaker. So now I'm good for another 100,000 miles.

Don't expect a blow-by-blow account of the surgeries. But there are a few insights I can offer.

For one thing, the worst place to get well is in intensive care. It's like Grand Central Station; people running around, chatting it up, patients getting wheeled back and forth. Also, don't expect to sleep in the hospital. You have to go home for that. Somebody is always taking your blood pressure or poking you with a needle or making you take another pill.

And I have a suggestion for Nobel Prize-winning medical research. Somebody should invent a comfortable garment to replace those electric wires that hook you up to a monitor. Every time you roll over, a wire comes unplugged, the alarm goes off and a nurse comes running.

While the best way to overcome tribulations in the hospital is with humor, may I say that the staff at the Kaiser Moanalua Medical Center, both doctors and nurses, really care.

After the third surgery, they put me in intensive care and I hit the wall. That night I was so tensed up I couldn't sleep. The only night in my life that was worse happened while I was covering the war in Vietnam. I sat all night in a sand dune foxhole during a mortar attack, in the cold rain with no poncho, my teeth chattering and ants crawling all over me.

This was just as bad, on my back with wires sticking in me as if I were a bionic man. At 4 a.m., the nurse, Jennifer, came over, unplugged the wires, gave me a sponge bath and a back rub, and rolled me on my side. I went out like a light. If I knew Jennifer's last name, I'd send her a bouquet of roses.

I ran into only one or two people at that hospital who were grumpy. Everybody else was kind and cheerful. It makes a big difference when you're scared and uncomfortable. A poor guy in my room across the curtain was really sick, unlike me. He couldn't keep anything down and wouldn't eat. Over and over the nurses coaxed him to eat as if he were their child.

I'm sure the Kaiser doctors and nurses have added productive years to my life and I'm grateful. Also to my daughter, Ginger, who babysat me in the hospital, and my son, Buck, who saw me through recovery at home. With a team like that, how can you fail?

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.