Earlier this week I accompanied Jeff to the emergency room of Royal Columbia Hospital. His ankle was hurting and swollen up like the proverbial balloon, so we went in to have it checked out. Previous appraisals had made a tentative diagnosis of tendinitis and the recommendation to not do anything that would impact the foot (running, etc.) I figured we’d be there for a good while but the emergency room was actually only sparsely populated. It turned out that didn’t matter, as we were there for three hours, anyway.
The first section — the emergency room proper — had a few people with fairly obvious ailments — a woman with her arm in a cast, a man on a gurney wearing a neck brace, while others were harder to pin down — a fussy baby, a young woman carting an IV drip alongside her. The man on the gurney complained of being bored but had four people other than his wife hunkered around him. The discussion was vague but ominous, with talk of blood and such, though none was apparent from where I sat. They eventually wheeled him off.
As we continued to wait, more people were taken past us, many of them heavyset, all of them looking either ill or bored or both. One gurney would be rolled through slowly, another more urgently. We were eventually moved to the ‘minor condition’ section to wait for an x-ray to be done. While there we heard a woman off in another room repeatedly cry out “Ow!” and “Oh!” It sounded like they were murdering her with pins. I started feeling a little squirmy at this point but she eventually fell silent as they either completed the testing/probing or she fainted/died.
She was later wheeled out into the same section as us, an elderly woman who said she had to keep her feet up and yelled at an intern “Don’t touch my finger!” as he tried to move her from a wheelchair that was sans footrest to one that had one. She apologized to him for the outburst then spent the rest of her time repeatedly asking to use someone’s cellphone, as hers had died. I don’t recall her actually making a call despite being handed a phone several times. She was eventually wheeled off and we heard from her no more. This provided some comfort as she was the only patient there actively screaming.
By this time Jeff was taken for x-rays and I went out to feed the maw of the meter in the emergency parking lot, also known as ‘How we keep the hospital solvent by charging the equivalent of a mortgage payment for 3 hours of parking’. There are handy green arrows on the floor to lead you from one section to another, so I would have no problem making my way back in. This was good as every corridor looked the same and equally depressing to me. As it turned out, the green arrows split at one point and I became utterly confused, finding myself in a room I did not recognize, one that was filled with beds and very sick-looking people and curtains that should have been closed but were not so you could see things you didn’t want to see. I turned around a few times and realized why so hospitals are such a great setting for thrillers and horror movies. I made my way back to Jeff in time to look at the x-ray and see the fractured bone in his ankle. The diagnosis was a plaster cast for the day, an appointment with a specialist the next day and probable replacement with a Fiberglas cast in a few days that would be worn for 5-6 weeks, with the fun bonus possibility of surgery if the healing didn’t proceed as desired. Jeff was understandably less than thrilled.
The diagnosis was later changed to an air cast that could be removed for sleeping/showering, with surgery unlikely, so things ended up looking better than they were originally.
About the only thing I liked at the hospital was the Tim Horton’s apple fritter I bought in the coffee shop. We shared it and it was yummy. Other than that, I can’t say I’m anxious to step in one again any time soon. Those places are enough to make you sick.
