Dreamy Doctors

Experience the Wait Room in Real Time at U of A Emergency Room

The one thing everyone wants to avoid is the one thing I now have to do. It starts with a small complaint, an itch, a painful stomachache. Now we're off to the U of A ER to see what can be done. Bets are on – how many hours will we wait? #EXSM3989

— Mark Ma (@voiceimage) July 16, 2023

My wife and I went out to grab some breakfast before doing a bit of Edmonton thrifting. But after taking one bite of the bagel she had ordered, she told me there wasn’t something right. Her stomach was overwhelmed with nausea, cramping, and acid reflux, so badly that she couldn’t eat anything. We decided to go to the University of Alberta Emergency Room to seek out help she wasn’t getting from her primary care doctor – which led us down a completely unexpected adventure I decided to live tweet about for our class.

The Adventure

My wife was registered in the hospital at 1:34 pm, with nurses at the front station saying it would be a 3-4 hour wait. Within the first half hour of being in the room, I realized a few things:

1. Why can’t they have couches in the waiting room? Anything has to be more comfortable than metal chairs.
2. Why can’t they have a TV in the waiting room? It would help to distract my wife and all of the other ailing people there when patients start to scream, major accidents come rolling in, or just general hospital issues crop up that don’t make anyone feel any better.

Despite being in the emergency room, and having a sick wife, we both felt that we were receiving the best care possible. Watching these men and women run back and forth through the halls, sorting through all of the emergencies and medications and knowledge, was truly a feat to observe. As the day unfolded, I could see the story unfold simultaneously. From an unhappy to start to a positive end, where she got the care she needed and I understood how important good medical care is, it was a story I felt needed to be shared.

My Writing Style

Going to the hospital can be a scary thing. My wife can attest to that, given she put all her symptoms away into a pocket, hoping that she could just make them go away instead of having to go to the hospital. It was important for me, then, in writing this story, to emphasize over and over again how kind – truly kind – the ER doctors at the U of A hospital were to us. Humor was something I felt I had to integrate as well, because without it the ER is clouded in a shade of grief and horror – something noone wants to read about.

And yes – our doctor was the McDreamy of Edmonton. Thanks Dr. Kyle.