I wonder if the Emergency Room staff at Surrey Memorial Hospital dream about people slumped over in chairs, cross-armed, shoes off, eyes bleary or shut, desperate.
The waiting is iniquitous; care-givers ambling here and there. This place truly is a disaster zone.
We came in at 7:30 p.m; it’s now 2:09 a.m. When somebody finally gets called, it’s like they’ve won the lottery. Some people get this shocked yet also smug look – I’m sprung from purgatory but you’re not. Enjoy your hell clock.
But they don’t know, not yet.
The thing is, there’s truly nothing at all funny about this abomination disguised as a public health care system. I sit in my chair, legs pins and needles, wondering how people come to work here each day with a sense of pride.
At one point, we are told, there was only ONE (1) doctor available in all of SMH ER.
On occasion, we see letters to the editor singing SMH’s praises. I swear, these must come from an imaginary place where nice things happen even to nice people.
Enter, line up, vitals. Sit down, triage, sit back down, wait-t-t-t. Get called in through some doors – aha! This is where health care lives. Preliminary assessment. Wait-t-t-t-t. Get called in through more doors, to room 14 – whoa! See familiar faces from that bygone era of purgatory. “You haven’t been seen by a doctor yet?!”
Reminded me of that Monty Python sketch, where a sultry housewife greets a milkman at her front door and leads him to a room upstairs. He enters, thinking he’s going to get lucky, and she locks the door behind him. To his horror, the room is full of long-bearded fellow milkmen and the skeletons of those she ensnared before them.
You think this can’t be real, can it?
You think, if I were intelligent I’d part with this madness. The reason you came for help in the first place begins to elude you, you’re so tired. But now you see it more as an investment and resolve to pursue it to its conclusion.
Saw a unicorn – I mean, doctor – at 5:20 a.m. who snarked at us for standing in the hallway. We replied we’re not waiting in room 14 anymore because this guy hopping around like a crane fly had turned it into his private den of chaos.
This column has been an open letter to you, Surrey NDP MLAs: SHAME.
I reported a while back on Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke deciding that the City of Surrey needs to step up and do something to fix Surrey’s health care crisis, although it’s the provincial government’s responsibility.
Man-o-man, I get it Brenda, I get it; the scales have fallen from my eyes. I’m a believer.
Until it’s fixed, I wouldn’t go to SMH ER for help if my skull fell out of my head.
