Well, my days where I could escape for an hour or two to enjoy myself seem to have screeched to a screaming halt. My mom, who has MS and Alzheimer's, had to be taken to Emergency two mornings ago. Her blood oxygen was 81%, and I don't know about you, but I prefer my mother pink, not blue. They gave her an oxygen tank, and had us wait in the waiting room. After three and a half hours they gave her a new oxygen tank, and we waited some more. After another three and a half hours they gave her yet another oxygen tank, and we waited some more. We waited a total of ten hours in the waiting room. And all that time my mom played her favourite game -- "let's drive the daughter crazy by asking to go to the bathroom every half hour." So every half hour I would push Mom's wheelchair with one hand, pull the oxygen tank with the other, negotiate the heavy bathroom doors, fit her, me, the wheelchair and the tank into the handicapped stall, disrobe her, hoist her onto the toilet only for her to say almost immediately, "Oh this won't work. It's too uncomfortable." And then I'd have to pull up her trousers, put her back in the chair, and wheel everything back through those nasty bathroom doors and sit and wait some more.

After the ten hours waiting in the waiting room, we finally got the opportunity to wait in the Emergency ward. Mom was hooked up to various equipment, so she was thwarted somewhat in her attempts to go to a bathroom. We tried a commode a couple of times, a bedpan a couple of times, and finally they catheterized her.

After a couple of hours we finally got to see the doctor. This doctor, a very nice woman, decided that it might be congestive heart failure, so she wanted to do an X-ray, which she admitted probably wouldn't do any good seeing as how Mom's spine was so curved. She also wanted a CT scan of her legs. The X-ray was done quite quickly, and did turn out to be useless. The CT scan was done at 5 in the morning. And all this time my Mom was suffering horrible leg spasms due to the uncomfortable bed she was on. The doctor had OK'ed baclofen to ease her spasms, but the nurses decided to wait until 5 hours later to give it to her.

While we were waiting, Mom coincidentally developed cellulitis in her legs -- very handy because she was put on antibiotics immediately. That was the only really good thing about our experience aside from her turning pink again.

We were entertained by a naked howler who needed 2 security guards to tie him to his bed. He kept whistling for his dog. Entertaining, maybe, but it didn't make for a restful night, though. And finally, 25 hours after we entered the hospital, my mother was assigned a bed. The reason for the long wait to get into Emergency and to get out of Emergency ... lack of hospital beds. Emergency was full of patients waiting patiently to be admitted. There has to be a better system than this! (I'm from Canada, by the way.)