Day #1885 (Tue., Mar. 3, 2015) – Duke Emergency
My wife’s blood pressure has been all over the place these past few days. This evening it spiked at 160. My wife called the doctor and he said that we should come in to Duke Emergency and get checked out. This is when all the fun began. Crazy stuff happening…just like at UNC when Katie was born. I decided that I would record all the “craziness” this time…
- We dropped off my car to the valet service around 6:30pm. I had never done before (and will never again).
- There was a waiting line to see someone at the Emergency desk. I would have thought someone would have come and asked us if we had an urgent need or not. Nobody seemed to be in any hurry.
- We ended up waiting with the “flu”, etc. victims…not good for little Bobby or us I’m sure…
- A nurse came and took us to the delivery area. There was no receptionist at the desk. More waiting. They had “3 and 1/2 Men” on the television to torture us some more. I took a while for us to find the remote control so we could at least change the channel.
- My wife usually gives a urine sample before they weigh her. Not here…not this time. They weighed her first…which didn’t seem to make much sense.
- As I was waiting for my wife I noticed the “traige” sign on the cart the janitor was using. It took me a while to figure out that they were trying to write “triage” for the “Triage Department”. This was a sign of more craziness to come.
- The television was blaring in the traige (I mean “Triage”) room. “Wheel of Fortune” and other crazy shows and no remote this time to stop the source of pain. I ended up trying to use the controls at the side of the television. They had about 500 stations…you can imagine how much fun that was.
- My wife’s blood pressure started stabilizing at around 133…there was lots of waiting.
- I went for a coffee at Starbucks downstairs…they forget to charge me for the coffee til I reminded them.
- We waited and waited and waited. They wouldn’t let my wife eat and she last ate at 2pm. It was after midnight before she got a chance to eat the banana bread I picked up for her at Starbucks. All this waiting couldn’t have been good for little Bobby. Oh well, the nurses had fun gabbing and eating pizza and ignoring us, which is all that matters, right?
- The doctor came and said that it would be about 5 more minutes while they waited for the last lab test. Well, that went on for well over an hour. Apparently he went to the delivery room and nobody told us.
- There was no sign of a nurse. Eventually one showed up and I said, “Did you forget us”? Amazingly the release papers were there within 5 minutes after I confronted the nurse.
- As my wife was getting ready to leave she practically inhaled the banana bread.
- The doctor who told my wife to come to Duke Emergency this evening said that we would get free valet parking due to the fact that it was an emergency. Was this the case? Nobody seemed to have heard of it.
- The guy at the valet depot brought us the wrong car when we asked for it. He said it would be a while to find our car as he is the only one working this evening.
- He asked us to walk to the Emergency Entrance to try help find my car and keys. He commented that people were mixing them up on purpose?
- I let my opinion be known to more than one security guard and information desk person as my wife and I walked to the Emergency Area. I was mad…remember using the “Dog And Pony Show” phrase and “Duke Hospital” in the same sentence.
- The guy who drove the wrong car over to the Emergency Entrance said that our key worked in the car…he just drove it over. He got in and tried again and miraculously it didn’t work this time. Go figure!
- My wife and I said that we’ll keep this car he drove over if he can start the engine…it’s better than our ole’ 1995 Camry. I asked if I could have a BMW instead?
- Eventually I find my keys in the stack.
- The charge for this wonderful service? Nothing. The lifetime of humor… Priceless.
- We finally got home after midnight and let Nikki go home as well.
- We were both up for a while longer as we were too frustrated to sleep.
I’m dreading what it will be like when we actually have to go to Duke to deliver the baby… The real sad part is I wonder how many people actually are putting themselves in danger as they think “it’s not that bad” just so they avoid having to get involved in this “Dog And Pony Show”.
WHAT I LEARNED TODAY
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1) Nikki took care of Katie this evening while we attended the Duke “Dog And Pony Show”.