Recently my young granddaughter had to make a trip to the Emergency Room. She was having severe stomach problems and the closest Urgent Care wouldn’t touch it. So my daughter spent several hours at the hospital while they started simple and bumped up each test searching for the cause of the distress.. This was no “my tummy hurts” episode.

My daughter posted to social media that she was grateful to be where she knew her daughter would be cared for with wonderful equipment right down the hall. It was very busy that day, and she said they didn’t get a bed but a chair and sometimes shared that, but that was, to her, a minor inconvenience sitting in a clean air conditioned room. It didn’t take me long to realize she had not fully recovered from my being rushed to the hospital a year ago.

I had finished a round of antibiotics a few days earlier for a minor infection. I walked to the school and back in the rain, heavier than we usually had but that was okay. When I got home, I realized I was actually chilled. I got out of my wet clothes and wrapped in a quilt that I had taken to the island, but not used before. When my daughter came home a couple of hours later, I knew I was in a bit of trouble. I didn’t have the strength to get “properly dressed” and after a couple of attempts, I didn’t particularly care. Things start to blur then. At the clinic, the nurse took vital signs and the Pulse Ox, measuring heart rate and oxygenation, were within normal limits, for a few minutes. The doctor obviously didn’t believe the nurses had taken it or checked the reading.

So I ended up on oxygen, in an ambulance, a fancy van really, with an EMT attendant that was not allowed to administer anything I might need medically due to a new director that didn’t trust her people, driving on roads that a month and a half earlier lost several bridges in a storm and unstable “Bailey bridges” in place. Hard to see the road even. And, we had to stop to pick up the district nurse about halfway into our trip of an hour. I am grateful that the clinic had bags packed with what was needed at the hospital, like sheets, toothbrush, toilet paper, a couple of gowns and a small, light blanket.

My bed was in a 19 bed open ward that currently had 22 beds. They kindly, maybe, put me by the door everyone used to go outside. It was always open so there was no problem with hearing a door slam anyway – I did say open right? The view was beautiful, the Caribbean Sea and all the magical colors through the day. The care was significantly lacking. My oxygen ran out about 2 in the morning. I realized it was now harder to breathe with the mask than without, so I set it aside and self monitored without equipment. They did manage to get the X-ray tech to come in and do a chest shot on the dilapidated machine. (that maybe cloudy area could have been some pneumonia or the cloudy areas that often shows up on that machine. There was another one on island, in our area even, but it was broken at the time) The next night, my IV quit about 4:00 am. I messed with it (I am a nurse) and it wasn’t going to open. I was there for IV Antibiotic and O2 therapy. So, at this point – well, I didn’t need to be there (except that new director wouldn’t let the clinic administer IV antibiotics any more either, thus the hospital). I finally saw a nurse in the night to tell her the IV was blown, She said she would let my nurse know and came back about 7:30,after I had told someone else at 6, mashed it with her fingers, seriously, mashed a spot already inflamed, and saw a drip in the IV letting her claim it was working. It was determined about an hour later that it truly wasn’t. I had already decided that as much as I don’t like vein work, I am good at it and I would put my new IV in rather than allow them. But I opted out completely. When my daughter got there we left AMA (against medical advise) after I let the doctor know that I wasn’t getting the treatment anyway. Oh and being by the door to the balcony? Easy excuse for the locals to check out the white woman in their midst.

So when my granddaughter went to the hospital, there was relief in knowing it could have been going very different. Being grateful. Oh, and the kid is okay. They thought appendicitis for a bit , but it was ruled out by tests and she is recovering nicely.

So many memories! So many triggers in our lives. So tough to learn to live NOW and not respond or react from old. Yes, more on those ideas another day!.