I hate Salem emergency room. I've had bad experiences in the past with doctors answering phone calls in the middle of giving prognosis', I've had a doctor just refuse to do tests on my sick 4 month old just for me to come back in 15 hours for a different doctor to accurately diagnose what is wrong and have to send me home with a nebulizer. But this last visit takes the cake.
Last Friday my daughter who has a history of feberal seizures had, out of the blue, spiked a high fever. I freaked out and turned into hawk mom just to make sure everything was going to be a little less seizure-y this time around.
One of the amazing attributes of being hawk mom means that you notice everything. Every cough, every sniffle, every cry. All of it. Well hawk mom laid eyes on a rash that started in her diaper area.
No big deal it's a diaper rash, she is sick. Well then it spread. Next I noticed blisters on her knees, back, mouth, arms and hands. So justifiably I freaked out. I looked up all the web MD the internet had to offer and came down to two possible solutions.
A) it's hand, foot and mouth
B) it's roseola
Both aren't super horrible viruses. No pain associated, none horrible at least, and both go away in time.
Well then my husband gets wind of the blisters and gets paranoid and I consult with Dr. Grandma who says to be safe we should take her to salem ER. The kicker and most important detail of the story is that it is Friday at 9:40 at night.
I pack my daughter up and get her to the hospital while dad looks after brother.
We check in, waiting room doesn't look overly busy. The triage nurse takes a look at Lily and tells us to wait in the chapel to be away from the sick adults, which I appreciated having a sick 20 month old and all.
At this point I really wasn't worried about anything. It wasn't to late, Lily wasn't too tired, and we had the chapel to ourselves so she could run around and watch her Elmo and be a happy child. But then the waiting started.
Anyone with a toddler knows it's not very long until a big open room gets boring and they want to explore other areas.
At the one hour wait time mark she was done waiting. There were tantrums and screaming and running towards the exit. It was a pain, but it was nothing new and no big deal. That is, until an unfortunate case came through and I had a family grieving and praying and looking at Lily and I like we were jerks for invading their time to pray.
I understand and left because that's crazy, why would I stay.
I went to the front desk and asked how much longer. I was told we were next in line to get in fast track. Awesome. No big deal. We had been waiting for 1:30 and Lily was tired and cranky but that wasn't unexpected. So we wait some more.
Another hour in, 2:39 total, we walk back to the chapel and played for another 30 minutes or so before we took a bathroom break. Now I'm tired, Lily is tired and we are done waiting and expecting to be placed soon. We head back to the chapel only to find more family praying for this poor woman(I'm guessing) so I ask the front desk if there was anywhere else we could wait and how much longer.
We were told the conference room was free and it wouldn't be much longer until we had a room. 3 hours in, still no room. So it's 12 midnight and I'm tired Lily has lost the wonder of being somewhere new and was just pissed and ready to go to bed. She was asking to go to bed for heavens sakes. BUT I went and waited some more. I waited for another hour.
4 hours is where I draw the line. They never came to us to say they were busy they just left us in the conference room unvisited for an hour. I was so done waiting that I picked up my daughter and left. No one tried to stop me nothing.
What's the best part is that no doctor had even seen us no nurse examined us, but when I say my daughter has a boil rash apparently it's no big deal. They had our contact info and they didn't even call the next day to ask why we left. They didn't care.
It's frustrating.
I got he at 1 am, waited out the holiday and when I took Lily to her doctors to see what was wrong the rash had vanished. But by my description the doctor agreed it was probably hand, foot and mouth.
I hate salem ER. A lot.
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