Today’s blog 

06/07/22

Lynn Murphy Mark

The waiting room

The words emergency room and triage naturally go together. As we entered the ER it was obvious that the joint was jumping and the wait would be long. After all we were able to walk in under our own steam. Jan has a weird thing going on with her vision and her heart rate is too slow for comfort and her blood pressure is too low for comfort. But she walked in, which right away bumped her lower on the totem pole. 

A nurse saw her pretty quickly though and her triage status became a little more urgent when she checked her vital signs and noticed that her heart rate briefly dropped into the 30’s. That’s No Bueno by any standard. 

I looked around the waiting room and wondered where they were going to put everyone. I think I counted thirty people in various stages of misery. Their companions were standing around looking forlorn mostly because there was no place to sit. 

Finally the staff had to triage the visitors. The best option was to locate us in chairs lined up along a wall in a corridor outside of the emergency room. It was 9 PM by then. We settled in for a long night. There is a certain camaraderie in these situations. One man was going to find a cafeteria and asked if anyone wanted anything. A lady said she had an extra Pepsi she would share. Someone said he had had a burger downstairs and we all thought he said “bourbon” and practically leaped out of our chairs. Sadly there is no nightclub bar in the hospital.

Meanwhile Jan was being attended to but was still in the waiting room. She went somewhere for a head CT scan and was waiting for a doctor to look at it. We were communicating via brief phone calls. Jan announced her intention to go home as soon as possible which sounds like a plan to me but we are at the mercy of the nice medical people that run the place. Naturally she is feeling better, thank God, so there’s a chance that we might be sprung before midnight but I’m not counting on it. After all I am in a make believe waiting room just following orders…my job description is to simply wait.