KWWL.com - News & Weather for Waterloo, Dubuque, Cedar Rapids & Iowa City, Iowa | Health Plus: Local man has 700 hospital trips

Thousands of eastern Iowans go to the hospital on a regular basis, not for check-ups or patient visits, but to stay alive with the help of IV infusions.

One Hudson man has been in and out of the hospital at least 700 times since 2005.

Don Ovel has had a lot of medical ups and downs.

"Had blood clots so they had me in the hospital for that, then they found out my heart was bad so after I had therapies my knee was bad. Then I've had open heart surgery for bypass," Ovel said.

Since 2005, the Hudson man has been in and out of the hospital 700 times.

But at 69-years-old, he is grateful Covenant Medical Center's Outpatient Clinic has kept him alive through regular infusions.

"You know one guy and his wife I knew him, I worked with him, and he come and he says, you know a nurse would say hi don, hi don, hi don, and he said do you know everybody here and I said yes I know everybody I've been here so much," he said.

From antibiotics to chemotherapy to blood, infusions are done sixty times a week at the Waterloo hospital.

"We meet so many different ages and you get to know patients well and their family and it's nice to see them make it through their therapy and on to what they love to do,"  a Covenant Registered Nurse Georgene Johnson said.

Don appreciates the care and friendship he gets from the Covenant staff.

"I can't describe the nurses at the hospital. They make your day," he said.

Covenant's Outpatient Clinic serves 10,000 patients annually.