another day at the hospital

No photos today.  A discouraging day.  Dorothy and I had breakfast together at the restaurant in the hotel.  Then, to take advantage of the sunny and warmer day, we drove around the immediate area and I did a few errands.  When we got back to the hotel, Dorothy noticed her feet and ankles swollen.  She put her feet up and they went down for awhile and then started to swell again up to her knees.  This was one of the signs we had been told to look for so, to our dismay, we headed back to emergency at St Lucie Medical Center again.  It was quite busy there and we had to wait almost an hour and a half before we were taken in.  She saw the doctor about half an hour later and he sent her to x-ray, then she had two rounds of blood tests, and had her IV inserts reinstalled in her much bruised arm.  She soon received a course of lasix.  Then we waited two hours during which Dorothy had to make frequent trips to the washroom.  She was (still is) somewhat unsteady so on one occasion the ER doctor was the one who gave her his arm and escorted her down the hall.  After the two hours, we waited for another round of blood work.  The doctor arranged a follow-up appointment with the pulmonary specialist who had seen Dorothy in the hospital - appointment to be ... TOMORROW.  Finally got to go back to the hotel after our episode of another five hours in ER.

We have had time to observe the work in the ER carefully, and, this being our third visit, some of the personnel are becoming familiar.  Overall, the service is far more "customer focused" and professional than any we have experienced in Canadian emergency departments.  When someone comes in to your room or cubicle, they always announce who they are, and what they will be doing.  Example: "Hi, Mrs. Foster, I'm Keith from the lab.  I've come to draw blood for some tests the doctor has ordered."  When he left, "These samples will go to the lab. now for analysis and the doctor will receive the results in between 10 and 30 minutes."  Also, we overheard lots of conversations with other patients along the lines of "This will reduce your pain and you'll be feeling much better soon." an so on.

We searched our memories and we couldn't remember hearing this line of reassurance in Canadian ER's we have been in.  When I had my five hour stint last fall before I even saw a doctor, no one told us anything about what was happening or showed any concern about what pain or discomfort I might be in.  I had had no tests of any kind during that five hours.

Also, while we have had some waits here of an hour or more, they are very busy with a wide range of patients.  We frequently see rescue squad personnel and police officers who appear very familiar with the staff and processes in the ER.  We do not see what I saw when Dorothy was in Grey Nuns for her procedure in October and that was an ambulance crew sitting with a patient they had brought in for the entire five hours we were there.  The rescue squad members we saw brought patients in on stretchers and usually within 10 minutes we saw them rolling the empty stretchers back out to the ambulance.

Anyway, those are some of our first hand observations.  Tomorrow we will be going to see the specialist and Dorothy will start a couple of new medications (we are now up to five).  We can see that we need to stay around until we have had at least two days where we haven't been in hospital.

It looks like we will be celebrating New Years in Port St. Lucie, FL - but hopefully not with the good folks at the St. Lucie Medical Center.