My mom lives in nearby Thorsby while I live in Montgomery. She called me at 11:30pm to say she felt lightheaded, a little dizzy, and had what felt like a slight pressure in her chest. She called the ambulance and the EMT's took her to St. Vincent's to be checked out.
I had left Montgomery immediately after receiving the call and arrived at the hospital minutes after her ambulance had arrived (the EMT's were just bringing out the gurney to their rig when I got there) I went into the Emergency Room, told them why I was there and gave them info on my mom (name, date of birth, address, phone, and reason for admittance). The woman told me they were going to get her in a room and then ask when I could come back. I was the ONLY person in the waiting room. About 20 minutes later she said again that they had her in a room and would see when I could go back. Fifteen minutes after that she said a woman had just gone back to see if I could go back. Needless to say it was over an hour before they let me go back. The worst part is that I had assumed they would at least let my mom know I was there. Even though she had been asking them and voicing concerns about how I had not yet arrived no one from the waiting room told her I was there and none of the nurses back with my mom bothered to check if I had arrived. This was not a far walk either, considering my mom was approx. 30 ft inside the doors from the waiting room I was in.
When I finally did get back to see her she was hooked up to a heart and pulse/ox monitor and they had a fluid IV in. They took her out to get chest X-rays and a CT scan minutes after I got back there. When she returned to the room about 15 minutes later, the nurse that brought her back first said she didn't know how to hook my mom back up to the machine and the IV...then was going to try...then decided no, she would have someone come in and do it. A half hour went by and no one came in to hook her back up. I stepped outside the door and explained that she had not been hooked back up and the nurse at the station said thanks, and they would come in and do it...which they never did. The original doctor she saw was also standing there when I told the nurse and did nothing. You would think if you were monitoring someone who you think may have had a heart attack you would want them hooked up to a monitor.
Finally, the doctor came in a little before 4am and said that the X-rays, and CT scan were just fine, but there were concerns with her blood work (PS no one had ever come in to hook my mom back up to the monitors). The doctor explained there are three types of cardiac enzymes. One that tells if there is actual muscle damage and that they use to determine if you've had a heart attack (which was normal and my mom did not), and two others. One of the extra two was normal and then the doctor said that the third was "significantly higher." She said that could indicate that although she may not have had a heart attack that enzyme could mean there could be something brewing or big That could happen on the horizon. She wanted to admit my mom so she could see the cardiologist in the morning...which we did. Kicker is when the cardiologist came in and looked at the tests he said it was slightly elevated, but nothing that he found alarming.
All in all I just felt like even though the ER was extremely slow, and at times there were 4 or more staff members sitting at the desk area within the ER, the overnight crew seemed fairly insufficient at simple things, like communicating that family members are there, or rehooking a patient back up to...
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