If you must spend Christmas in a hospital, there is no better place to be than at Saint Elizabeth’s, says Jim Fox. That said, he never would have guessed that’s exactly where he’d be. Only weeks earlier he and his boys were adding a three-season porch on his home in Wabasha.

“It came on so fast,” he explains. “Started out as a sore back. By the end of the day, I could hardly walk. My legs and feet were numb, and the pain in my lower back was almost unbearable.”