Recently, I spent six hours in a waiting room. It was late at night, so me and my sister-in-law got talking and many weird and funny things came to our minds (pretty sure we were delirious from all the waiting). I thought to myself after sitting there for hours on end, as the clock struck 2am...If hell was a waiting room, with no hope of every getting in, (or of getting in only to be led to another waiting room after another) that would be torture enough for me to flee from it like the black plague...To do everything in my power to make sure I didn't end up there - in the perpetual waiting room of no hope. BRUTAL! You may be wondering why we ended up in this waiting room predicament. Here's my story:
On Sunday night Tom, Rebecca, and I were enjoying a nice game of Settlers of Catan when Rebecca's ear started to hurt (she's had a cold all week). Then we noticed she had blood coming out of her ear (scary!) so we decided to head straight to the clinic. The first one we went to was closed at 9:22pm, even though the sign said 10pm (and the nurses were watching Pirates of the Caribbean!) so they sent us downtown Calgary much to our dismay. We headed downtown into this sketchy area and headed to the clinic. The waiting room was full, but we plunked down anyways because an ear needs careful attention (I kept bugging my sister-in-law telling her that her intelligence was leaking out of her brain :) The hours ticked by, and no one was called in. Slowly they would call a few people in at a time-every half hour of so. But when they call a name and that person wasn't there, they wouldn't replace it with a new name!! Frustrating! There were strange people in the waiting room with us, and we read and joked with the poor girl next to us who just needed a prescription renewal (honestly, why wouldn't you just wait till morning!) Oh and I forgot to mention it wasn't a "first come, first serve" system, it was "sickest patients are seen first" which is okay but hard to have people who came in after you, go in first. We joked about what we could do to get in faster, I told Rebecca I could hit her and she could start crying and screaming and falling on the floor but she wasn't too into it, although I dare say after four hours we considered it. For a good hour and a half they called no one in except one women and a criminal with a big shiner, who two police brought in (oh yes, handcuffs and all) apparently, they were both emergencies, and they only had one doctor at this point in the night. We were also starving and had no loonie (oh we had change) to buy something from the stupid vending machine that only accepts loonies. So I ran outside (scared to death, hoping not to run into sketchy people) and found one measly bag of trail mix that we savoured like it was the last supper.
Finally after about 5.5 hours Rebecca went in. Turns out it was pretty serious and her hearing would have been damaged had we not went in. So that made us feel better after all the waiting. We needed to go get the medicine right away after so we headed to the Shoppers at 4:30am to get a prescription filled. But lo and behold, the computers were down. So there we were, 4:30am at Shoppers, sitting in the "sore back?" pharmacy chairs eating chips and pop waiting for something to happen. Oh man, was it ever one of those moments when you think, "Wow, I would have never thought I would end up here when I woke up this morning!". There was also these wired guys hanging out in the store watching us (one guy with a huge afro and another white guy who looked like he never made it passed the 80's). After we finally got the prescription (at this point I wasn't taking no for an answer from this poor little pharmacist who barely spoke English) and ran out to the car to get away from the wierdos...Rebecca felt like she was on drugs cause she was so dizzy from having her ear flushed out that running and jumping into the car almost did her in! And finally we got to go home, at 5:30 am! Published by Mindy on Thursday, August 31, 2006 at 12:45 PM.
3 Comments
On Sunday night Tom, Rebecca, and I were enjoying a nice game of Settlers of Catan when Rebecca's ear started to hurt (she's had a cold all week). Then we noticed she had blood coming out of her ear (scary!) so we decided to head straight to the clinic. The first one we went to was closed at 9:22pm, even though the sign said 10pm (and the nurses were watching Pirates of the Caribbean!) so they sent us downtown Calgary much to our dismay. We headed downtown into this sketchy area and headed to the clinic. The waiting room was full, but we plunked down anyways because an ear needs careful attention (I kept bugging my sister-in-law telling her that her intelligence was leaking out of her brain :) The hours ticked by, and no one was called in. Slowly they would call a few people in at a time-every half hour of so. But when they call a name and that person wasn't there, they wouldn't replace it with a new name!! Frustrating! There were strange people in the waiting room with us, and we read and joked with the poor girl next to us who just needed a prescription renewal (honestly, why wouldn't you just wait till morning!) Oh and I forgot to mention it wasn't a "first come, first serve" system, it was "sickest patients are seen first" which is okay but hard to have people who came in after you, go in first. We joked about what we could do to get in faster, I told Rebecca I could hit her and she could start crying and screaming and falling on the floor but she wasn't too into it, although I dare say after four hours we considered it. For a good hour and a half they called no one in except one women and a criminal with a big shiner, who two police brought in (oh yes, handcuffs and all) apparently, they were both emergencies, and they only had one doctor at this point in the night. We were also starving and had no loonie (oh we had change) to buy something from the stupid vending machine that only accepts loonies. So I ran outside (scared to death, hoping not to run into sketchy people) and found one measly bag of trail mix that we savoured like it was the last supper.
Finally after about 5.5 hours Rebecca went in. Turns out it was pretty serious and her hearing would have been damaged had we not went in. So that made us feel better after all the waiting. We needed to go get the medicine right away after so we headed to the Shoppers at 4:30am to get a prescription filled. But lo and behold, the computers were down. So there we were, 4:30am at Shoppers, sitting in the "sore back?" pharmacy chairs eating chips and pop waiting for something to happen. Oh man, was it ever one of those moments when you think, "Wow, I would have never thought I would end up here when I woke up this morning!". There was also these wired guys hanging out in the store watching us (one guy with a huge afro and another white guy who looked like he never made it passed the 80's). After we finally got the prescription (at this point I wasn't taking no for an answer from this poor little pharmacist who barely spoke English) and ran out to the car to get away from the wierdos...Rebecca felt like she was on drugs cause she was so dizzy from having her ear flushed out that running and jumping into the car almost did her in! And finally we got to go home, at 5:30 am! Published by Mindy on Thursday, August 31, 2006 at 12:45 PM.
3 Comments
Wow what a morning!
Love those random evenings. Tell Rebecca I hope she feels better and to study some more because of all the leakage.
Peace.
SO Mindy... guess this beats our 1.5h trying to find a parking spot at English bay for Celebration of light?