If ever I was going to punch someone out, today would have been that day.

I spent the day at the hospital with my mother, and am convinced that the sole purpose of this institution is to make life as difficult for people as they possibly can. God forbid that things should run easily or smoothly for those people who are sick or worried about what the tests they’re going to take might reveal.

Five years ago my mother was in a terrible car accident (although that’s not what we were at the hospital for today) and as a result she has a difficult time walking long distances. She is also having difficulty breathing, which is what we were at the hospital for today, so again walking will leave her short of breath.

Her appointment was at ten this morning, we got to the hospital at nine thirty, knowing we had to go through registration first. We stopped at the desk and asked for a wheel chair, as we knew that these corridors were really long. They said we’d have to wait while they tried to find one.

Huh? Try to FIND a wheel chair in a HOSPITAL?

IT TOOK THEM TWENTY MINUTES TO FIND ONE.

Ok, so we rolled to the registration area and had to wait for another twenty minutes, making us late for the ten o’clock appointment. I finally wheeled her to the right spot and the pulmonary person took her in right away to run her tests. Very nice person, friendly and trying to keep mom from being worried.

from there we rolled to the pulmonary doctor. Checked in at his office and waited for over an hour. In a really ugly hallway where there was no privacy at all. Finally that doctor showed up, full of apologies for having been trapped in a meeting. He took us in almost immediately and started asking all sorts of questions. Then pronounced that she has congestive heart disease.

Oh good, Lord. What does that mean? I don’t think either one of us is really sure.

Basically she has fluid in her lungs and they need to figure out a way to get rid of it. They aren’t sure that this is all there is to it, as it may also be that her lungs are shrinking. I have no idea what that means. She also has an enlarged heart.

This is getting worse and worse.

So this doctor ordered more x-rays and another pulmonary test.

This meant taking a piece of paper and going to radiology. We get to radiology and this very, very RUDE woman refused to call either of the places we had been to get the registration number from when she had checked in. This meant that I had to go back to registration and wait for forty-five minutes to get a number that they could have called up with one press of a button on a keyboard.

I was seeing red.

So it was back to radiology for x-rays then back to pulmonary for another lung capacity test, then back to pulmonary doctor.

We had now been at the hospital for four hours.

Pulmonary doctor came out, told us he had been in touch with her heart specialist and that they were going a certain treatment route and she should call the heart guy when she got home.

We were doen and could leave.

We’d been there for four and a half hours. I can’t imagine what this would have been like if she had had to go through all of this by herself.

So we stopped for lunch on the way home, then went to make the phone call.

not more that a half hour had passed since we left the hospital and by the time she got the heart guy on the phone he had decided that he disagreed with the pulmonary guy and wouldn’t go for the agreed upon course of treatment.

I wanted to scream at this guy. My mother has been going through these tests for three years and they still can‘t decide what’s wrong and what to do about it? What is with these guys? They keep ordering and ordering the same tests but make no decisions?

I am losing all respect for the medical profession and I certainly have no respect for any of the reception or clerical help. If there was a way to make this day more frustrating or difficult, I don’t know what it might have been.

I have to go into work for the day tomorrow to do a workshop about new paperwork we’ll be facing in the fall. It’s not exactly going to be riveting, but it might be helpful. Or not. It might just be frustrating. And it’s being conducted by the Ice Queen, so I know it won’t be enjoyable.

I blew off rehearsal tonight. I have no idea why, but I just decided that I didn’t want to go. So I didn’t. I didn’t even make a real effort to talk myself into going.

I’ve made a slight dent in the household stuff. I got to the laundromat – it took hours- and I’m still folding and putting away clothes. I also got through the kitchen and removed alien life forms from the fridge.

Hey, it’s a start!