A get-well order in Irving is almost never a question about flowers. It is a question about which unit the patient is on, because the unit decides whether an arrangement gets to the bedside, waits at a nurses' station, or is turned away at the lobby. Irving itself has two hospitals: Baylor Scott & White Medical Center – Irving on North MacArthur Boulevard in 75061, the city's main acute-care campus, and Medical City Las Colinas further up North MacArthur in 75039. The eighteen-mile radius around the 75062 centroid then pulls in most of the region's big names. East along Walnut Hill and Forest Lane: Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas and Medical City Dallas. The Harry Hines medical district southeast of the city carries Parkland Memorial Hospital, UT Southwestern's William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital with the Harold Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center, Children's Medical Center Dallas on Medical District Drive and Scottish Rite for Children on Welborn. West and northwest: Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Hurst-Euless-Bedford on Hospital Parkway in Bedford, Texas Health Arlington Memorial on West Randol Mill Road, Medical City Arlington on Matlock, and Baylor Scott & White Medical Center – Grapevine. Thirteen buildings, thirteen sets of floor rules, one delivery grid.
The floor rules are worth knowing before you order, because they are the reason most rejected hospital deliveries get rejected. Intensive care and critical care units generally take no fresh flowers at all; the realistic outcome there is a lobby handoff to a family member, or holding the order until the patient moves to a regular floor. Oncology, bone marrow transplant and stem cell units are stricter still: many accept neither cut flowers nor potted plants, because soil and standing water can carry fungal spores that are dangerous to a patient whose immune system has been deliberately suppressed. On a general oncology floor where flowers are permitted, lily-free and low-pollen is the expectation, and scent-free is often requested outright. Neonatal intensive care takes no flowers; a postpartum room usually does. Pediatric units — Children's Medical Center Dallas and Scottish Rite among them — commonly prohibit latex balloons for allergy reasons and want a small footprint, since the room is already full of equipment. Two practical constraints apply everywhere: a bedside table is smaller than people imagine, so a compact design survives better than a tall one, and privacy rules mean a hospital will generally not confirm to us that a patient is there. Send the patient's full name as admitted, the unit or floor, and the room number.