by Dorothy Marie Kucera

Created on: April 22, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

We can get men and women into outer space but we cannot manage to secure a couple of extra doctors or nurses - from the plethora who are running around the seven floors above the Emergency Rooms in this country - to come down and assist the short-staffed, overworked, fatigued E.R. doctors and nurses. Why is the E.R. system so antiquated? If a patient cannot be treated in a timely manner and suffers more damage, then it is a failure.

Mother's BP had soared to 209/98 by the time the hospital Emergency Room did an initial evaluation in their tiny triage room. We did not have to wait too long so I thought getting to the doctor would progress quickly. However, we were asked to leave the area and wheel my 87 year-old Alzheimer Mother out to the larger waiting room where a parade of stretchers with or without patients, paramedics and the public went to and fro. It was cold out there, near a main exit door. Mother had no place to get her feet up so we dragged another chair over to try and help provide circulation back up to her heart. What we had been ordered to do seemed so backwards...instead of proceeding to the next level deeper into the E.R., we had to retrace our steps and leave the double entry doors behind. A young disheveled man in a motorized wheel chair, all alone, was evicted along with us. A sick, young boy thrashed and cried restlessly the whole time, also sent out..his relatives were struggling to keep him contained on their laps. As mother studied this eclectic group of people coming and going, her sense of humor kicked in. "This looks like the subway in New York City!"

One hour later, we were finally invited back into the very well-equipped E.R. with many large exam rooms all around a central nursing station area. Our room had wide, sliding glass doors with curtains on the inside that could be drawn. A television was in there. Soon, Mother was hooked up to an automatic blood pressure cuff but it hurt her and frightened her mind every fifteen minutes, having to go to a higher level to catch her high BP reading on its way back down. The oxygen monitor on her finger troubled her, also. We had to help talk her through the situation each time the machine reactivated. Blood was drawn and we were told it would take one hour for the lab to return the results. Suddenly, the machine went into high alert...red light flashing, a loud, loud incessant noiseyet no nurse came in to see what danger was happening to Mother. I waited a minute, then went out, asking the

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