How hospitals make you feel stupid...

Sarah

Sarah wasn't feeling well this afternoon so I drove her St. Mary's hospital over by Golden Gate park.  I dropped her off at the entrance and then parked the car in the garage.  When I walked through the entrance I expected to find a directory but all I got was some girl on her cell phone giving me the dirty eye.  It's rather baffling that hospitals floor plans aren't made more intuitive.  People come here in times of pain and stress and are left staring at the five million signs wondering which way is the right way to go.  They need medical help not GPS.

I was kind of expecting the emergency room to open up in front of me when I exited the elevator.  Kind of like in the movies where there's this huge room with patients shuffling back and forth.  Not quite.  After turning two corners and ending up in the radiology section, I asked a nurse where the emergency room was. 
   "Um, it's behind you over there."  He said with a tired look.
   Oh, I completely missed the white double doors that said "Emergency Room" on them.  Heh.  I tried the doors but they were locked.  An old man walking down the hall kindly yelled out, "Dear, you have to hit the intercom before they let you in..there, hit that button." An intercom?  What if I was having a heart attack?

After they buzzed me in I figured this was where I would see the big waiting room.  I ran down the hall past curtained rooms, empty gurneys and medical equipment and somehow ending up in another lab section. WTF?  Since the emergency room was on the bottom floor, there were really low ceilings and no cell phone reception, so I couldn't even call Sarah. 
    I turned down two more hallways and then circled back around to the nurse's station out of breath, "Have you seen my friend?  She just came in..she's about this tall, um.." The nurse looked at me like I was crazy. ".. Um, do you have a waiting room or something??"
   She pointed me to a set of white sliding doors that I just ran past.  OMG.  I finally find Sarah and we spend the next fifteen minutes sitting in a tiny waiting room flipping through brochures about medical alarms and hospital billing options. There's an 80s cop movie playing on the crappy TV and the guy beside me is picking at the wound in his knee.  Lovely stuff. 
   Finally she got checked out and I went back to the waiting room which was now filled with too many people.  After five minutes or so, the guy behind me decided to rest his feet on the seat next to my head. Um, so gross. I sat  perched in my seat watching the knee guy fidget back and forth.  After ten minutes of this I couldn't take it anymore and bolted for the sliding doors.  Except um, they didn't slide this time.  Push.  Nothing.  I turned to see one of the ladies in the room staring at me stupidly.  I looked at the doors again and saw the fine print, "Doors do not open on their own." Seriously? Why the hell not?  I turned back to the check-in desk, "Um, the door doesn't open on it's own???"
    The nurse rolled her eyes, "No they don't."  She hit a button and the doors opened up. 
ARGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Sarah was treated with medication through an interesting plastic breathing contraption.  I almost took a photo but it looked kind of phallic and I was sure she'd kill me for posting it.  She's doing better now and despite the craziness of that hospital, we did get a good laugh about all the things we saw but couldn't txt anyone about.