Hospital experience proves we need fix
Will someone kindly explain to me why our nations health care situation is aimlessly adrift? Yesterday my family spent 12 hours in the emergency room of an established suburban hospital. Here's our story; it could so easily happen to you next. After my wife's fever broke over 103 degrees, I rushed my wife, along with our 10-year-old daughter, to the hospital, because her family physician was overbooked and couldn't see us till later in the day. We immediately were seen in triage and sent to a ER room, normal procedures. Her vitals were taken and numerous blood samples extracted, and within an hour were told an infection was present. She was hooked up with intravenous and all seemed normal procedures. Then a "comedy" of calamities embarked. This staff was stressed and overburdened. There was the shift change, more cases flooding the area, equipment malfunctions, poor communications, all leading to great stress on my wife, who also had neck and shoulder pain of eight on a scale of one to ten, her fever mainly jumping between 100 and 103. Her intravenous fluids monitor stopped four times during the course of her stay and only one meal was served in 12 hours. She also lay on a large bed sore she's had since January that no one even looked at. Our 10-year-old who is very bright and who we were hopping would go into the medical field completely freaked out around midnight and her bright future could have been scarred by this experience. Anyway, we were told all along that they were waiting for a room and had none available. The only actual doctor we saw the whole time we were there was in the first hour. Three times I asked to speak to a supervisor and finally around 10 in the evening, we were told other hospitals in the area were also full but an ambulance would come in the next two hours to take us to a different hospital. You can bet that our relatives were gravely concerned since all I could do was leave messages on their answering machines informing them that we had rushed to the emergency room suddenly that day (both of our cell phones lost power) and without a room number we couldn't be contacted. Finally at 1:30 in the morning my wife arrived at another hospital and got into a room. What a day and night! I won't even get into the fracas caused by construction on the Edens, where we couldn't get off on many exits due to late night construction... If this is the direction our aging society is facing, God help us all!
Randy F. Gollay
Buffalo Grove