Fiona's STILL in the emergency ward...

...along with the drunks, crazies and now, a lot of old hurt people.

The ER was BUSY tonight. There were four stretchers with people in them. Lots of old people, including a woman I was sitting next to in the waiting room who had broken her leg. I could see the bones in her ankle and shin had been shattered pretty badly. It was lumpy and pale like oatmeal. Yet she did not complain - maybe it was her other leg. Who knows?

Fiona remains where she was, more than 40 hours after her arrival. She told me she had a bad night's sleep with doctors flitting in and out of her curtained-off cubby, checking her blood pressure and taking blood samples. Thank goodness the pain and bleeding have stopped. She was scheduled for a colonoscopy today (collective AAUUGHH!!!) but it's been delayed until tomorrow, which means another night in the ER.

We've made her as comfy as possible with blankets and pillows, comic books, school work, music, toiletries - we'll be moving in furniture pretty soon if she doesn't get out of there fast. She's been allowed clear fluids here and there, but not 12 hours before the 'scope, so oral nourishment of any kind is as sure as rain in the desert at this point.

The IV drip is pretty gross. The nurses keep missing her veins, so her arms are covered in bloody holes. At one point we were watching how quickly the bag was dripping and jokingly remarked that Fiona must be hungry. About an hour later the nurse came by and was rather shocked at how quickly the flow was, so stemmed it. Heny and I felt stupid for letting Fiona's IV arm get so swollen with saline.

("I am tired of people making fun of my enormous hand. It all began in 1975, when I was born...."The nurse looked at me funny and edged out of the room backwards. She probably thought I was the crazy lady a few cells down.)

I could write a post about how crappy our health care system is and about the long wait times in the hospitals, but I really don't feel strongly about anything going on there, knowing these doctors are overworked and underpaid. I do, however, mind the gaggles of staff - nurses, doctors, technicians, paramedics, etc. - that seem to gather about in little knots and just yak it up for hours, doing not very much else. I mean, aren't there people you could be, I don't know, helping? Couldn't you just go out into the waiting room and hand out some packs of gum and juice boxes or something?

At one point, Fiona wandered up to a random doctor in the ER and asked for a Tylenol. He said rudely, "I don't know who you are," and walked away. Luckily, one of the nice nurses - the same one who quickly edged away from me after the giant hand story - went and checked to see if Fiona could have the painkiller, got her one, and settled her.

Now, if all the doctor had said was, "Sorry, I can't get you any drugs unless we check if you can have it first. Let me ask the nurse to check," I would not have taken his stethoscope and given him an emergency colonoscopy...in my head. Fortunately, there are good people who make up ten-fold for the bad ones. They make this planet worth saving.

Anyhoo, poor Fiona has to stay another night.

One more thing before I end: the public washroom is exactly next to Fiona's cubby in the outer hall. Whenever the toilet is flushed, it sounds exactly like a man going, "WOO-HOO!"

More on this later.