26 Hours in Purgatory

I may get a little emotional here but by the end I’ll hope you understand. Before I fully engage, let me say that I have the utmost respect for those on the medical profession, most especially nurses. I am the son of and a brother to nurses. They have the most important and least appreciated jobs in the world. End of qualification round. I’ve pulled all-nighters many times in the past, especially in the Army. They started in college where my time management skills were nascent, at best, and the all-night studying/typing were required to make up for excess partying. My time management got, necessarily, incredibly better in the Army, but that didn’t prevent and, in many cases, led to all-nighters which were many and usually spent in less than hospitable conditions (that last adjective is thoroughly appropriate to the past two days). I pulled my latest all-nighter Tuesday night and it was completely unplanned, and in my mind, totally unnecessary. My Favorite Panamanian came down with a bout of vertigo, something that runs in her family and has happened a couple times in the past. Since it seemed pretty serious, we wanted to get her in to see a doctor. We’re unfortunately between Primary Care Providers since ours retired unexpectedly and even doctors accepting new patients needed at least eight weeks before an initial appointment (which will be next week). We opted to go to a recently opened Urgent Care Clinic right down the hill from us and were favorably impressed with the new facility.

After easily getting an appointment (they even accepted our insurance) we were seen quickly and then everything stopped. My wife’s blood pressure was very high, and combined with the dizziness, they said I had to get her to the emergency room immediately. That’s the kind of comment I take fairly seriously. We went directly to the University Campus ER of the UMASS Medical Center which has always been a great facility for us. That status suffered a death blow in what followed. We were quickly registered and sent into the Triage room. Her blood pressure had come down a little bit and they took some blood and said we needed to see a doctor. We nodded and took our place in the waiting room. That was the last medical advice we received during our stay which, as referenced above, last twenty-six hours. We were about to experience the dark underbelly of the US medical system. Yes. We spent twenty-six, brutally long hours sitting in the Emergency Room Waiting Area and never got close to a doctor. Everything I’m going to relate now I learned after lodging a complaint and talking for about a half hour with the head of the Urgent Care Unit. We sat down in the waiting room a little after five in the afternoon on Tuesday and watched the various life forms that populate the emergency room. It was exotic. There was a special section where mental health patients were kept and attended to while waiting. People were called from the teeming mess every half hour or so but I figured we had to wait our turn. Boy, was that true. By 8pm those calls stopped and no one was called in for the next twelve hours.

I started to question the on-duty nurse about what the holdup was to learn told patients are seen in priority order. Later I was told we had a low priority since my wife’s blood pressure had come down. I got increasingly angry as I told them she was my #1 priority and it was ridiculous to keep a senior citizen, exposed to all the vectors present in a modern day emergency room, waiting for so long. Little did I realize the wait was just starting. I made runs through the darkened hospital to an in-house Dunkin Donuts shop they had to keep us fed as we learned what the one channel they showed had for late night viewing. We saw the sun set and then rise from the same seats. By mid-morning on Wednesday one of the nicer nurses said based on what she was seeing “on the other side” she hoped we would be called soon. The population had dropped to where hopes sprung up. These were dashed in the early afternoon when new patients, with apparently higher priority, came in and eventually were called in. This included a number of “street people” and drug addicts who inexplicably (to me) had higher priority than my wife. This is when I lodged the complaint to the patient advocate, stating my wife had been in the waiting room for twenty hours at that point with no end in sight.

To their credit, they got back to me. They were appropriately appalled but not surprised at my experience. They offered me a face-to-face meeting with the head of the Urgent Care facility which I agreed to and learned about that aforementioned dark underbelly. We had been waiting on the walk-in side of the emergency room. The other side, unseen by us, took in ambulances and helicopters. There were, unbelievably, 200 beds on the treatment side and all were full. He explained the biggest issue was the lack of beds in the main hospital, fully 80 of the people in the ER rooms should have been moved to the hospital but there were no rooms open. There were no rooms in the hospital because, of the 300 beds there, more than a hundred were occupied by patients waiting for beds to open in rehab facilities. Another significant number were patients that should have been transferred to either mental health facilities or jail but no beds were available there. UMASS is building a new hospital wing that will open in January but that wasn’t of any help now.

FBR Modeling her 1st Day of School Dress

He kept going back to their reliance on their triage and priority system, which they took from a national nurses organization. That’s when I kind of unloaded. I told him that after all the years in the military I knew all about triage and his system was broken. I told him there was absolutely no communication from his staff other than telling us we were a low priority (again, not what anyone wants to hear about a loved one). The nurses and other staff seemed to having a fine timely socially overnight but no information or understanding was communicated to us, the unwashed masses waiting for care, and there seemed to be no sense of urgency anywhere within his department. I told him waiting 24 hours for care was  unacceptable and there had to be a way to insert senior citizens and kids into a higher priority after waiting for hours. I related that during our wait a seemingly healthy young lady sat down next us and got on her cell phone. It was unavoidable not to hear her telling a friend that she was here because she felt down and a friend she spent time with had Covid. I asked why wasn’t she given a mask when she reported that. He said that they couldn’t force people to wear them. Oh, she was seen after a 45-minute wait. He apologized and said this was that dark underbelly. He himself had spent 48 hours the past weekend in a Boston emergency room with his father after he had fallen. So, there was a lot of acknowledgment that they knew they had a problem but no fixes. I told him I was leaving in 45 minutes if not called and that’s what happened.

Off to Second Grade

We had been sitting next a gregarious 80-year old guy for most of the 26 hours and, typically, my Favorite Panamanian had made friends with him and his wife. He was in for a heart attack but was kept waiting as the drug addicts and street people were taken care of. As we were packing up to leave, he suddenly became confused and was no longer lucid. That finally got him seen, I hope he’s okay. A dark underbelly indeed. We were back at the Urgent Care facility again today where we were seen immediately as they cringed at our experience over the past couple days. My wife is feeling better but incrementally. The missed night’s sleep and meals certainly didn’t help. The system is broken. On a decidedly more upbeat note, today marked the first day of second grade for the FBR which she was very excited about. We received these pictures during our time in purgatory and that helped more than anything. My “kids” were equally pissed off at the treatment their mother received and my son told us we need to come up to their hospital in the future to get away from the big city woes. I talked with the insurance company today who said that would be fine. A crazy world we live in.

Definite Morale Boost

One movie fell in my A-Z watch (tried last night but kept falling asleep for some reason), a most definite keeper: Four Weddings and a Funeral, one of my absolute favorite movies of all time, love every character

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RECURRING CHARACTERS:                                     

ABFA – Amazing Best Family Athlete - my daughter in law; BR3 – Blog Reader #3 – granddaughter #3; BRS - Blog Reader the Sequel - second granddaughter; Cantankerous Friend – friend since grade school who likes to argue about everything, poses as radical leftist to attract women; CRC - Connecticut Riverboat Captain – another close friend from high school, renowned sailor of the big river; Curbside Girls – close friends of my daughter acquired during him her single days in Brooklyn; Deckzilla – our backyard deck which grew to monstrous dimensions once my wife got involved in planning; Favorite Panamanian - the wife (of course); FBR - First Blog Reader - first granddaughter; First Friday – celebrations to mark the First Friday of the Week; Great Aunt - my elder sister; Keene Friends 1 & 2 – friends since high school from my home town of Keene, NH; Kindergarten Friend – friend since kindergarten whom I reunited with after many years; Maine and Virginia Musqueteras – two close friends of my wife – her US sisters, my wife is the 3^rd Musquetera (musketeer); Namesake Nephew – son of Great Aunt and Soxfather named after me; Neighborhood Mafioso - wife's close friend and Panamanian mafia member; PanaGals – female relatives /friends of my wife from Panama; Panamanian/Latin Mafia – inevitable group of Latino friends my wife accumulates wherever we have lived & their spouses; PCR - Pittsburgh College Roommate– high school friend, also a “Minor Celebrity” in Pittsburgh; PCR+1 - Pittsburgh College Roommate’s wife; Riggins - also known as the Grandpuppy, son's dog; Soxfather - my brother in law; Tia Loca – wife’s younger sister; Wingman – my son in law; Wingmom – Wingman’s mom, of course