How I spent my afternoon/evening at the competitor's office

Shortly after I woke up Tuesday afternoon I was on the phone with my sister and making my self a sandwich. Adam had the kids in the pool. While my sister and I were talking she said, "oh, Dad's trying to call on the other line. He can just wait." She said this because our dad calls us CONSTANTLY. As soon as he sees something on TV or he thinks about something he wants to tell us or ask us, he calls. Even if he had JUST talked to us a few seconds before. It can get annoying if he's having a particularly brain-storm-y kinda day. A few moments after that MY other line started beeping which I assumed to be dad also. After we hung up Adam's cell started ringing and sure enough, Dad. I didn't answer. Then he called on the home phone again. I thought, well, I guess I better answer cuz he's just gonna keep on calling. (Keep in mind this is a guy who had already called twice and been to the house and it's just now 3 in the afternoon.) So he tells me that he talked to a nurse at the VA hospital he goes to about all the problems he'd been having (which apparently were episodes of shortness of breath, dizziness and blackouts, none of which he had ever mentioned to me). She told him he needed to go to the ER. I called my sister and we arranged to take him. Here's the catch, my dad hates the hospital I work for, which is a really great hospital, btw. Rated one of the top 100 hospitals in the nation, only one of two in Illinois. He calls them a slaughterhouse. He's based this fact on three friends of his who have passed away there. One has had mild to severe health problems his entire life until he passed away somewhere in his 70's. About the same with another and my dad's very good friend battled cancer for a very long time and passed away there also. So, yeah, totally my hospital's fault, right? Anyway, because of this he wanted to go to the hospital across the river here in Iowa. So that's where we took him.

They registered my dad and put us in an exam room. Shortly after that it started getting hot in the room. That's because there was no air and no thermostat, despite EVERYONE who came in looking for one and then telling us there wasn't one. Thanks, we hadn't noticed. We ended up having to leave the door open. Not long after we were put in a room I heard the familiar "ding ding" and lights flickering for a code about to be announced. Then I heard, "Code Blue, first floor physician's lounge." I saw everyone at the nurse's station across from us look at each other and then almost every one of them went running. One of their own was down. They ended up shutting our door almost every time they wheeled someone past so we didn't get to check anything else out, however I can tell you that the physician did pass away. A 47 year old anesthesiologist. Very sad.

Over four hours later they determined there was nothing wrong with my dad. (tell me then, why has he blacked out three times in the last week...better hospital my ass!) As we were walking past the nurse's station and out the door I noticed a lot of "commotion". Huddled together was a gaggle of doctors having a conference. Some of their name tags indicated they were in charge of things. One of them, probably not a doctor was the VP of Corporate Communications. Around the corner near their pow-wow was a police officer stationed outside of an exam room. As we exited there were three or four police cars, one or two unmarked cars and a crime scene unit van all parked outside. Something went down while we were there, however we've never seen anything on the news. Kinda scary.

Pops says he's feeling better although I think he's afraid to admit he got poor care at his preferred hospital. Maybe next time he'll listen to me.