Which hospital is a Lincoln Park patient likely to be in?
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Four directions, and they are not close together. North, on the neighborhood's own edge: Saint Joseph Hospital at Diversey and Lake Shore Drive, then Advocate Illinois Masonic on West Wellington, which takes the trauma calls. Southeast: the Streeterville block — Northwestern Memorial on East Huron, Prentice Women's on East Superior, Lurie Children's on East Chicago Avenue, the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab on East Erie. Southwest: Rush, UI Health, Stroger and the Jesse Brown VA, all inside the Illinois Medical District. South: the University of Chicago Medical Center in Hyde Park. Ask the family for the building, not the system: the answer swings our nearest shop by several miles in each case.
Our grandchild is at Lurie Children's. That used to be around the corner.
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It did, and a lot of people here have not adjusted. Children's Memorial closed at 2300 Children's Plaza in June 2012; the hospital is now at 225 East Chicago Avenue in Streeterville, and the old wedge at Fullerton and Lincoln is the Lincoln Common development. Chicagosmarcel Florist on North Fairbanks Court stands inside that same block and takes the bulk of the run. Before ordering, ask which floor. Hematology, oncology and stem-cell transplant units generally exclude cut stems and potted soil as a category, and the newborn intensive care unit takes nothing at all — in both cases the better delivery is to the family, not the patient.
If flowers can't go to the child's room, where should they go instead?
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To wherever the family is sleeping, which around Lurie Children's is very often the Ronald McDonald House at 211 East Grand Avenue, four blocks south of the hospital entrance. That address accepts deliveries for a named family through the day, and a parent who has been in a vinyl chair since Tuesday gets more out of it than a child on a neutropenic protocol would. A ward lounge or a nurses' station is the other workable answer, though those need the unit named on the order. Put the parent's name on the card as well as the patient's, or the desk has nobody to page.
Why do you leave out lilies and anything with a scent?
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Two unglamorous reasons. Lily anthers shed a powder that transfers to sheets and to skin at the first brush past the vase, and getting it out again becomes an unbudgeted errand for whoever is covering the floor. Separately, a flower bred to fill a room — stargazer, freesia, hyacinth, tuberose, heavy stock — fights directly with nausea that is being managed by the hour on the cardiac and transplant floors at Northwestern Memorial, and in a shared room it lands on a second patient who was never asked. Latex is the third one, and nobody predicts it: balloons and the ribbon tied at the vase neck both count. If lilies are the favorite, we build exactly that for the house on discharge day.
A relative is at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab for several weeks. What works there?
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Something alive, in a pot. Rehabilitation admissions on East Erie Street run for weeks rather than nights, and the room genuinely becomes somebody's address for a while — a kalanchoe or a potted gerbera is still going strong when the third bouquet would have been thrown out. Two practical notes. The room is often empty mid-morning because the patient is down in a therapy gym, so an early-afternoon arrival is likelier to be met in person. And put the room number on the order: nothing gets paged in a rehabilitation tower, and a delivery with only a surname waits at reception until somebody thinks to ask about it.
Will a 2:00 PM order really arrive today from Lincoln Park?
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Usually, and the exceptions are all local. A Cubs afternoon start empties onto Clark Street exactly when the northbound run is going out. Lake Shore Drive closes outright for the Chicago Marathon in October, for Bike the Drive, and around the Air and Water Show at North Avenue Beach, which severs the fastest line to Streeterville. The Pride parade takes Broadway and Halsted for most of a Sunday in late June, and ZooLights fills Stockton and Cannon on December evenings. In winter, add the lake. None of it stops a delivery; all of it argues for ordering in the morning rather than at 1:55.