SARATOGA SPRINGS — Saratoga Springs cartoonist John McPherson spent some time talking to the nurses at Saratoga Hospital Tuesday and said his time in the hospital bed inspired some of his most popular drawings.

The cartoonist, whose “Close to Home” panel appears in about 700 newspapers, donated the original drawing published two years ago in which he referred to Saratoga Hospital nurses as “hot.”

“I’ve spent a lot of time in Saratoga Hospital,” McPherson told his audience. “I had kidney stones for about six weeks a couple of years ago and the next year I had gall stones. Between them, I made 13 visits to the emergency room. This cartoon was my payback.”

The panel shows a patient about to be placed in an ambulance and being told that another hospital is closer but the nurses at Saratoga Hospital are “hot.”

Chief Nursing Officer Mary Jo LaPosta, who assumed her post at the hospital this month, said she was pleased, not offended by the reference.

“I compare us being referred to as hot as a comparison to professional basketball players being hot on the court or baseball players on the field,” she said. “Our nurses are like NFL draftees who are hot.”

McPherson said the characters in his daily cartoons often deal with medical professionals.

“I do so many medical cartoons because they deal with people in a stressful situation and that lends itself to humor,” he said. “I’m not making fun, I just find funny ways to look at things.”

McPherson said he was an engineer at the Watervliet Arsenal in 1985 when he moved to Saratoga Springs and started jotting down his cartoon ideas and drawings.

“After five years I had progressed to where I was making more money cartooning than as an engineer,” he said.

McPherson is a native of Corning.

He said his ideas for the cartoons are sometimes based in personal experience and often are just “weird ideas” he has in his head.

“I try to picture things going wrong. Sometimes the things I don’t think are that funny, I look at and say, someone will laugh,” he said.

He said often he is entertaining himself rather than focusing on the broader audience.

Saratoga Hospital Foundation Executive Director Terry Lee said the timing of the presentation of the cartoon wasn’t attached to anything specific at the hospital.

“One of our nurses approached me and said he would like to give the original to the hospital. That’s all,” she said.

McPherson said Tuesday’s pleasant visit would not likely be his last at the hospital.

“I’m sure I’ll be back again,” he said. “Probably with kidney stones.”