A broken medical system

It is absolutely heartbreaking and eye opening to spend a day sitting and waiting, and waiting and sitting, in South Shore Regional Hospital. 

Follow me as I walk you through the Emerg experience: 

9:57am triage

10:05am asked to wait in separate room for bloodwork, which provides false hope that this will go quickly

10:15am back out to main waiting room

2pm moved to secondary waiting area (a hallway in emerg)

3pm brief chat with doctor, in what I can only describe as a storage room. He orders a Catscan for suspected appendicitis 

3:05pm moved to a stretcher in the hallway, where there are 3 elderly men on stretchers and at least 4 people in this "secondary waiting area"

4:35pm Catscan

5:26pm no appendicitis (yay) but might or might not be a variety of other things, but who really knows, so sent home

5:45pm discharged with no helpful information, still in tremendous pain, vomiting and loss of all faith in the medical system. The kicker-the lovely invite to, "Please come back if symptoms worsen." 

All the while watching as 10+ nurses are in a flurry in the nurses station, at least 5 cleaners are busily wiping down seats and mattresses and turning things over as quickly as they can. There are so many paramedics about that I lost count and what felt like endless sad, sick and defeated looking patients, waiting to be seen, amidst utter chaos.

Every kind of person is there. The grumpiest man who won't give up his hospital issued wheelchair and sit in a chair, when their is a shortage of wheelchairs. The sweetest elderly gentleman who had been with his caregiver, so patiently waiting to see a doctor, for several hours, and still smiled and told us sincerely to enjoy our evening. There are people in stretchers that look to be just hanging on and they're all alone...in a hallway. Who knew a bed, in a room, was a luxury?!  It's such an extremely sad scene!

The doctors are...professional and clearly overworked. The nurses are mostly kind and lovely, but there seems to be too much going on for everyone to be in the know. Fortunately there are people like Caylen (his shirt said "paramedic", but as far as I can tell he was our nurse). He was funny and helpful and kind and relateable. He is the reason I can hang onto a little glimmer of hope in that hospital. So, thank you, Caylen. Truly. 

I have known for many years that our medical system is broken. So deeply broken, but today...today I felt lost and hopeless, alongside all of the others. Our lives are in the hands of these overworked people, in these overcrowded places. We deserve better! We ALL deserve better!