The staff were exhausted and overwhelmed as Merrill and I arrived at the Albuquerque VA Medical Facility to the Emergency Room. Merrill had been experiencing extreme dizziness with difficulty in holding his equilibrium. He woke up with it and after a few hours, it was evidently not going away. His only medical source is the Veteran's Administration Healthcare System. With all the news surrounding the infamous "Walter Reed" Veteran's Hospital back east, we'd like to bring the focus on ALL of the VA Healthcare Hospitals and facilities around the country as this is NOT only taking place at Walter Reed.
We arrived at just about 10am and were processed thusly: "Ok, Mr. Haskell, take a seat and we'll be with you as soon as possible." I looked around the waiting room while holding onto Merrill's arm, should he need to be steadied. There were some overflow seating in a second waiting room just outside the emergency room double doors. The main waiting room was filled to capacity; young and elderly. I noticed one guy talking to himself, another slumped over in his seat, apparently sleeping; a woman with oxygen tubing coming from her nose; an elderly man with a feeding tube apparently protuding from an unbuttoned shirt; a young man sporting a "hickman" (IV tube) that was leaking while his wife/girlfriend was mopping up drops of blood from the dirty floor. One lady, dressed in a white skirt and blazer approached the window as we were settling in. I heard her say to the receptionist, "Ma'am, we've been here since 10:00 o'clock last night-how much longer do you think we'll need to wait? My dad isn't doing very well and we're getting very worried!" The receptionist told the lady, "I'll check in the back, ma'am, but I think we just don't have any beds right now.." With that, the lady in white, waited for the receptionist to return with the same news she'd been getting all night.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, there are no beds..now, if he's getting worse, I can have you speak with our triage nurse.."
"Yes, please, thank you", replied the lady in white.
After two hours, Merrill, now seated in a wheelchair, began showing signs of agitation. A elderly man entered the ER in a wheelchair, unaccompanied. He rolled up to the receptionist's window and announced, breathlessly, that he had come in with chest pain. He'd taken a second dose of nitroglycerin and it wasn't working (to reduce his discomfort).
Under normal circumstances, this patient should have been taken back to an exam room, STAT. Instead, he was directed to the waiting room. I left to go take care of the dog at home and returned later when Merrill called me, bringing him something to eat and drink. By then, it was 4pm and he had not been seen. Several others I recognized upon my return to the ER. In fact the man with chest pain was still in the waiting room, slumped over in his wheelchair. I hoped he'd not died right there in his chair, waiting to get help. I decided I'd go speak with the triage nurse myself... for Merrill's sake, who was not getting any better at that point AND for the man who seemed to be forgotten with chest pain. By then, everyone had been there for more than five hours-some overnight!
The triage nurse was rather short with me. I understood she must have been exhausted by then, yet I couldn't help but feel that we were all feeling undervalued and unimportant. I worried that we may have well been witness to some patients not making it to see a doctor at all! Merrill was becoming increasingly upset with the wait and had asked me more than once in that last hour before finally being taken back to a room, if we should just leave and go find a private hospital. Of course, we could have done that, but he would have had to pay for it, without any assistance from the VA. I felt certain (well, sort-of certain) that he was going to be seen within the hour, so I asked him to be patient, all the while, concerned for the other patients who were obviously in grave danger.
Finally, at 5pm, Merrill's name was called. Once back in a room, the staff were reasonably prompt in their duties. One nurse, taking blood from Merrill, was totally inept. She chose a vein on the back of the hand. She did NOT wear gloves (the first try) and did make excuses as to why she had to use the back of the hand, rather than the arm. The doctor who saw Merrill was a retired MD professor who was donating two days a week to the VA ER. He was a very good, thorough doctor..too bad there aren't more like him! Oh, yea, Merrill turned out to have a virus in his middle ear. He's ok now..but we learned alot about the broken system and have decided we will not sit by and watch as our Veterans suffer the indignity of coming home to a half-baked, half-assed Healthcare system! That said... I ask that you contact your state and federal representatives - let them know we expect this issue to be worked on and resolved NOW. Time is of the essence and we can't afford to allow our Veterans come home to this shameful lack of funding and understaffing...lack of facilities to handle the influx of new patients and low patient to staffing ratio. Thank you~!
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