Garden Grove has one hospital of its own and is ringed by nine more, which is why a get-well order placed from this ZIP so often has an out-of-city address on it. Garden Grove Hospital and Medical Center sits right on Garden Grove Boulevard at 12601, the same street as Garden Grove Florist, the only shop in our ring with a Garden Grove address. Everything else is a short drive over a city line. UCI Medical Center at 101 The City Drive South in Orange is Orange County's academic medical centre and its Level I trauma destination, which means a lot of the serious calls from this city end up there. Children's Hospital of Orange County is a few blocks away at 1201 West La Veta Avenue. Providence St. Joseph Hospital is at 1100 West Stewart Drive on the same Orange campus cluster. To the south, Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center at 17100 Euclid Street and MemorialCare Orange Coast Medical Center at 18111 Brookhurst Street both draw heavily from Garden Grove's southern ZIPs. To the west, Los Alamitos Medical Center at 3751 Katella Avenue is the natural hospital for 92845. To the north, West Anaheim Medical Center at 3033 West Orange Avenue and Anaheim Regional Medical Center at 1111 West La Palma Avenue. Kindred Hospital Westminster handles long-term acute care just over the Westminster line.
Every one of those buildings has its own rules about what may come up the elevator, and those rules are the whole craft of a get-well delivery. The reliable constants: no lilies, on any floor, ever — the pollen stains, the scent carries down a corridor, and several of these units treat them as a flat ban. Low-pollen or de-pollinated stems throughout. Nothing strongly fragrant, because a patient two beds over may be nauseated by it. No soil, meaning no potted plants, on transplant, oncology and bone-marrow units where the growing medium itself is the concern; those floors frequently decline live flowers altogether, and an arrangement sent to a haematology patient will be turned around at the nursing station with the best of intentions. Intensive care generally does not take flowers at all. Paediatric units, CHOC included, take them but want them small, light and free of anything a child could pull apart. Latex-free balloons only, if any. What works almost everywhere is a compact vase design a nurse can move with one hand — roses, alstroemeria, carnations, spray chrysanthemums, hypericum berry and eucalyptus in a squat vessel, not a tall arrangement that tips on a wheeled bedside table.