Time After Time

I had planned on following up on “The Wildflower Program” but will table it till tomorrow for this late breaking family news. . .

Late Sunday afternoon, Emma and I were on our way to a meeting after leaving our two daughters’ soccer game a little early. I was getting gas while Emma was in Costco and she called to tell me that Mary Liz had just been hit by a soccer ball really hard in the head and her coach was concerned about a concussion. We sped back to the field, in part because she was hurt, but also because she’d gotten a severe concussion a year and a half ago. The coach and I walked her to our car and I headed to the ER while Emma took the others home.

We got the ER which shall remain unnamed. So anyway, there we were at 1500 Matthews Township Parkway sitting and waiting. When I checked in, I asked how long they thought it would be. She said, “Well, the longest a person has waited so far is 3 1/2 hours, but it won’t be that long for you.”

The triage nurse saw her and ordered a CAT scan. Two and a half hours later. . . we were still sitting in the ER waiting room in a sea of people—but still a full hour ahead of the longest wait. Fortunately, I was able to people watch while Mary Liz slept on my shoulder. I also had ample time to stare at the column in front of me with a magazine rack next to it.

It is the most supreme irony to me that the magazine in the rack was an issue of TIME. I’d had 2 1/2 hours of it to stare and even draw a picture. 

Then a very nice woman in a yellow shirt started making the rounds to all the groups of people. When she got to us she said her name and that she was a “Patient Representative.” The irony was thick enough to cut at this point. I wanted to ask her, “How patient?” but I didn’t.

Then she said, “I am so sorry to tell you this, but it is going to be another 3 hours before the doctor sees you.” 

I smiled at her and said, “You have a very... tough... job.” 

She replied, “You have no idea.”

Knowing that my daughter, if she had a concussion, needed rest, I opted to release ourselves on our own recognizance feeling that the institution no longer had anything to offer us, and we went home. We called the medical practice that she saw for the other concussion and just saw them this morning. All is well though she does indeed have a concussed brain.

But all this got me thinking about time. So much of how it passes depends on how we are spending it. Spending time in an ER and/or hospital is like jumping head first into a black hole. Mix a little pain into the equation and it will lead us to Haddon Robinson’s statement: "I have a formula: Pain + time + insight = change.”  

Let that sink in for a couple of days, and I’ll circle back to it after I finish up the broken flowers idea tomorrow.