Valley Baptist Hospital Scares the Hell Out of Me
by A local Veteran
I am currently writing this article in Room E424 on the fourth floor in Pediatrics. My 3 month old son has the flu. It’s freezing cold in here. Since the moment we walked in at 11:30 a.m. we asked them to turn down the AC. It’s currently 9:58 p.m. and they still haven’t changed the room temperature. They told us due to his age and him having the flu he needs to be in the isolation room. Then why the hell is it so damn cold? This doesn’t make any sense. The room should be warm if you have the flu. We would put some blankets on him if they had any. We did get two sheets about 15 minutes ago. That helps I guess. When we first arrived the doctor stated, “he needs to have an x-ray done of his chest, given Tamiflu and broad spectrum antibiotics. Time frame looks something like this. 11:19 a.m. - walked in to the room. 3:15 p.m. - IV solution started with saline and blood test done. 6:00 p.m. - X-rays were given and then had to be retaken. 8:30 p.m. - for Tamiflu administration 8:45 p.m. - for antibiotics. We don’t understand why these things took so long. and of course 10:05 - still waiting for room temperature change. We have ended up propping the door open with the baby seat to heat the room. Kind of defeats the purpose of isolation, but we are at a lose on what to do. Update: The “engineering guy”, David, just showed up and says he just heard about the problem. This is despite the fact the nurses have been claiming they have been calling all day. David had some fancy tool which showed the air was blowing at 57 degrees. Saying all that, David turned out to be very nice. Now, I'm making a lot of fuss about the temperature. However, I want it to be clear. The thing which concerns me the most is the amount of time it took my son to get treatment. I would like to state, it appeared our second nurse, Cindy Ruhe, was able to get things done for us. I don’t want to think about how bad the night would have been without her help. Just to back up my point. Let me state what happened last time we came with my 4 year old son. We brought my son in with a temperature of 104 degrees on a Sunday night. We checked in to the emergency room. They told us to wait. They wanted to run test and x-rays. However, after 3 hours, we noticed about 6 families, which had come after us, had been treated and then left. During this time my son’s temperature dropped to under 103 degrees. So, we took our son home and took him to the doctor’s office the next day. They are still trying to charge us for services never rendered. Every few months we get a bill from them. We call them to tell them what happened. They always say they will take care of it and never do. So, why does all this scare me? At this level of incompetence, if i need a surgery, will they operate on the right body part?
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