Always an Adventure

Today started around 2am when I went with Jenna and her husband to the ER. She was having incredible abdominal pain. When she's in enough pain to agree going to the hospital, she's really in pain. As usual, there are idiots working at our local hospital. We arrive and the triage nurse is off somewhere and will "be there shortly." She comes lollygagging in with a big cup of coffee which she is trying not to spill and takes her sweet old time positioning her self and starting vitals. I got the distinct feeling that unless you were decapitated and handed her your head personally that nothing was that urgent to her. Working in the Emergency room always meant to me that the nurses there should act with a sense of urgency. Ha. She attempted to ever so slowly lead my daughter to yet another empty desk to wait indeterminably for another employee in order to be registered before being brought into an examination room. Bull crap. That wasn't happening, not on my watch. A few words about reporting to the administration her lazy demeanor and shoddy service and she was bringing us to a room a bit more quickly.

Hours later - but shorter than most ER visits at this hospital - the verdict was renal colic and a UTI with the distinct possibility that she had passed a kidney stone. This was after a full bag of IV fluids, a CT scan and an abdominal ultrasound. I was pleasantly surprised that all this was done between 2:45 and 6am. Record breaking for this place. Passing kidney stones is supposed to feel worse than childbirth - since she just went through that ordeal a mere five days ago this makes it especially rotten.

There were moments of comic relief as she started to feel better. Josiah probably scared the daylights out of the woman in the next room when he leaned in to kiss Layla and bumped the huge rolling medical cabinet. This sent this giant 8 ft wide, 6 ft high cabinet sailing into the curtain dividing the "rooms" and rolling towards this woman's bed at quite a speed. Being draped in the curtain she could not see that it was a cabinet not the wall moving towards her. She was having some mental issues and I imagine she must have thought the walls were closing in on her. I'm sure it wasn't funny to her, but we were tired and it brought tears to our eyes. There was also the incredibly funny at the time "your yams are always overgrown" comment. I think we were getting giddy and silly from lack of sleep.

Little Layla slept through most of it, waking up for a snack mid-hospital visit. She is just such a cutie.

And to close, here is a picture of wee Layla in the arms of giant Poppa.