Get Well flowers in Pittsburgh

A large share of the get-well flowers ordered in this city are headed for the same square mile. Oakland holds UPMC Presbyterian on Lothrop Street, UPMC Montefiore on Fifth Avenue, UPMC Magee-Womens on Halket Street and the VA Pittsburgh campus on University Drive, all of it wedged between the Pitt and Carnegie Mellon campuses and threaded by the Fifth and Forbes one-way pair — which is why the shortest distance on the map is rarely the fastest drive. A mile and a half east, UPMC Shadyside and the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center sit within a block of each other on Centre Avenue. North across the Allegheny is Allegheny General on East North Avenue, the Allegheny Health Network's flagship trauma and neuroscience hospital. AHN West Penn is on Friendship Avenue in Bloomfield, UPMC Mercy — trauma and burn care — is on Locust Street in Uptown, and UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh is on Penn Avenue in Lawrenceville, right off Route 28. That density is a gift for same-day delivery and a trap for anyone who assumes the rules are the same building to building. They are not, and the difference is usually lilies, fragrance and soil.

The floor rules are where these orders actually fail. Oncology and infusion — Hillman on Centre Avenue, the cancer floors at Shadyside, Allegheny General and West Penn — want no lilies of any kind, nothing heavily pollinated, and no fragrance; for neutropenic and transplant patients live potting soil is commonly excluded too, which rules out a potted plant until discharge. UPMC Children's is the strictest address on this grid: it is a latex-safe hospital, so latex balloons are out entirely, and pediatric oncology, cardiac, transplant and intensive-care units expect lily-free, low-pollen, fragrance-free arrangements. Neonatal intensive care at Children's and at Magee-Womens generally takes no flowers or plants at all — for a NICU family, send to the parent lounge, the family's home, or hand it to a relative in the lobby. Adult intensive care, neurology and burn units at Presbyterian, Mercy and Allegheny General are frequently flower-free by policy, with a lobby handoff the only way in. Maternity and post-surgical floors are the most permissive in the city and take nearly anything, which is why Magee-Womens is the one place where a bright, full arrangement is almost always the right call. Safe defaults everywhere: alstroemeria, lisianthus, spray roses, carnations, gerbera, solidago and greens, in an unbreakable vessel short enough to sit on a rolling tray table without tipping.