kalien
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Joined: 9 Oct 2007
Posts: 66
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# Posted: 30 Oct 2007 01:12
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I had a personal experience late last night that even Jerry himself couldn't have scripted any better than the way it actually went down. It will probably be lengthy for effect, so if you're tired, just stop reading now. If piqued, here it is...
I'm at the junction of my (mid) life when my elderly parents have now become my "children". Mom recovering from congestive heart failure in August, and Dad convalescing at home from quadruple by-pass in Sept.
Neither one can drive, so I'm commuting 30 miles each way, at least 4x/week to do their grocery shopping, banking, laundry, housecleaning, and taxi-ing to doctors' appointments, etc.
This past Friday, I applauded myself for providing them with a weeks' worth of prepared meals, clean bedsheets, enough cash to look at and two-weeks worth of pills laid out & compartmentalized in those accomodating little "pill organizers". I was finally going to have a peaceful weekend to myself to catch up with my own household chores & shopping. Right ??.... No!!!!
At 6:30 on Sunday evening, my Dad calls me on my cell to inform me that Mom has been suffering an incontrollable nosebleed for the past four hours!!! ...And, she wants me to come to the house. I am not, and never have been, in the medical profession, having only knowledge obtained from my research of their ills and prescribed meds on WebMD. So I YELLED that he is to call an ambulance PRONTO & I will meet them at the hospital.
I take the roast out of the oven, splash water on my face & drive 45 miles to the hospital. Upon arrival, I wait on line to get information on Mom's status, (has anyone ever had the privilege of being at a NYC emergency room on a weekend??), and after 20 minutes get a visitor's pass and the station number.
I proceed to the station number I was given and am greeted by Dad(!!!), dressed in a hospital gown with an IV coming out of his hand.  I don't even recall which question I asked first, but the two queries were: What's wrong with you? & Where is Mom?
Answers: "One of my surgical incisions looked infected to the paramedics so they called another ambulance to bring me in, but 'I'm fine now - I'll manage.'"; and "Mom's on the other side of the hospital having her nose packed."
Now, spouse is in the waiting room, it's 8:00 with no food since breakfast, and I'm looking at an all-nighter at the ER. I find Mom, she's looking good, bleeding has stopped, but she reports that the doctor wants to monitor her BP and hemoglobin count. Still looking like a long-haul, I tell her that I'm going across the street to the diner for a bite to eat so they don't have three family members in the ER simultaneously. She starts to cry, (literally), "don't make them keep me here overnight!". Well Mom, it looks like Dad is here for the long haul too, so I'll at least try to get you side-by-side gurneys.
I journey back to Dad to advise him of my plans to eat & he informs me that in the interim, his nurse said he will be processed for release within 20 minutes. But he promised that he would be wheeled over to Mom's bedside and wait for my return.
I then stop by Mom's gurney on the way back to the waiting room to collect & feed my spouse & let Mom know that I will be back within the hour. Something made me stop at Mom's nurse's station for whatever reason, and I found out that all of her blood work came back and she was also going to be processed for release shortly.
Going back to my previous reference of a NYC hospital ER on a weekend, both "reports" could still be interpreted to be a two-hour wait time. Nevertheless, I feel obligated, as the dutiful child that I am, to trek halfway across the hospital to inform Dad of Mom's prognosis. Upon arrival at his gurney, there is a wall'O'sheets surrounding him and I can see enough to observe him trying to get dressed. I wait for the appropriate moment to step inside the sheet wall & ask what the Hell he thinks he's doing. He waves his crumpled discharge papers in my face and says he's getting dressed & will wait by Mom while I get my blood sugar levels elevated. 
I help him finish getting dressed, assist him off the gurney & proceed to navigate him to where his wife, my Mom, is being "held prisoner". Alas, when we arrive at her station, her bed is empty & the nurses inform us that she was also discharged. So where is she? Don't know - have to page her. After another twenty minutes of paging and wandering, we find her in the front lobby of the hospital - miles of corridors away from the ERs in the rear of the facility, waiting for the cab she called to take her home. Dad promptly steps up to her side, the cab pulls up & they both get in, one of them (don't recall which) saying, "We'll call you during the week if we need anything." as they pull away from the curb.
It was a silent drive home, with my spouse pushing the pedal to the metal, and we ended up having aprozen pizza slightly after midnight.
I don't know if this anecdote necessarily qualifies as "Humor", but belive me, it was quite therapeutic to wrire about it. So I Thank all of you that suffered through my tale of woe. But seriously, if you could have seen it play out, or perhaps if I was a better descriptive writer, you would appreciate its potential as a classic episode of Seinfeld!
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