General Hospital

We've spent the better part of this week at our local hospital. Seven hours in ER, then 30 hours with Irene hooked up to drips and pumps and gadgets that beeped a lot. She waited more than 2 days for "emergency" gall bladder surgery. Finally last night at about 10 PM they removed her "bad" gall bladder and we hope she'll be released today.

And we managed the whole event with only a couple of near fisticuffs with the "charge nurse". We asked the 1st nurse (after 24 hours) if she had any time when surgery would be. She called for reinforcements and hence the "charge nurse", or Nurse Rachett as we fondly call her. When we asked her the same question about time she went ballistic.

"If this is inconvenient to you, if eating is more important than your health, (?) if you haven't learned by now that waiting is part of the plan. There are sicker people than you, you know." By then everyone was upset. Nurse R. said, "well, if you're going to be mad at me, I'm out of here. And your surgery will be sooner or later!" With that she was gone.

Everyone has said I must file a complaint. I must! So I started thinking how I'll write this long articulate letter with all the details, send it off. Then I started thinking, What if one of us ends up having surgery again sometime? What if we end up on 2 West during the 2:30 PM shift? What then?