The Long Hard Wait

"The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

My mom fell on Saturday night when a nurse’s aide at the Houses of Providence, left her unattended sitting on the edge of her bed. It has been a long three days since then. The doctor at the nursing home felt it best to avoid the trauma of sending her to emergency by ambulance. Mom hasn’t done well the last couple of times she has had to leave the nursing home. So the decision was made to give her pain meds and keep her sedated until an x-ray could be done on the hospital side of Providence Health Care on Monday morning. The x-ray clinic doesn’t open on the hospital side on the weekends.

Early Monday morning, we learned the x-ray clinic was not opening that day either so mom was taken to Toronto East General Hospital by ambulance shortly before 10 o’clock. Nan rode with her in the ambulance. I had some work I needed to do with a client downtown so I didn’t arrive at TEGH until just after noon. I found Nan crying, still in Emergency with my mom whose pain meds were wearing off and who was showing obvious signs of distress which explained Nan’s meltdown. It’s awfully hard to watch my mom in pain. There is no way to explain to her what is happening. It’s hard to comfort her or assuage her fears.

Our expectation and hopes that mom would be seen early were dashed after a couple more hours of waiting. She didn’t get into x-ray until 4:30. The news wasn’t good. Mom has a broken hip. The orthopaedic surgeon outlined our options – do nothing and leave her in bed for a minimum of the next three months, or take the risk and elect surgery. We chose the latter. Being confined to bed at mom’s age is a recipe for disaster with an almost certain outcome that pneumonia would soon set in and claim her life. Surgery, of course, comes with its own risks, not the least of which is that she won’t survive the anaesthetic . But that is the decision we made. We were advised the surgery would take place last night.
At about 9:30 we were moved from Emerg to a room on the 5th floor and told we would soon be advised as to when the surgery would begin. At midnight we asked for an update. Shortly before 1 A.M. we were told there would be no surgery until the day shift arrived. We all went home.

Nan and I returned to the hospital early this morning to begin the long wait. It is now close to 3 o’clock. We still don’t have a time set for surgery. She is sedated. We are exhausted.

Hospitals are boring places. There is very little to do. The staff at TEGH are nice enough but mainly indifferent. The facility is old and depressing. I’m trying to figure out what was in the mind of the decorator who chose the paint colours for the walls. The primary colour is diarrhoea gold. The trim is flesh coloured. It’s about as ugly a combination as one could imagine. The catering facilities are sad. The gift shop is small and very limited. The smells are harsh and offensive to my super sensitive nose. And we wait. And we wait.