Friday Night Surprise

On my way to visit Sam last evening, I recieved a phone call from the nursing station at Park Terrace informing me that Sam had pulled out her feeding tube and so they were preparing to send her to Flushing Hospital's Emergency Room for what is called a a peg replacement. I asked that they have the ambulance wait until I got there, so I could go over with her. In the Past, when Sam was in the hospital, she had pulled out her feeding tube twice and it was a bit of a procedure for them to replace. I knew all the details though, and so when I got to Park Terrace and asked them if they had simply tried to put it back in before everything closed -up. They looked at me kinda funny and said we don't do that here, we are not a hospital. Alas, I almost wanted to do it myself, so as to avoid Sam needing to go through a"minor" procedure" but knew I wouldn't be allowed. Sam was wide awake and in an agitated state. She needed to be playing with something all evening so I brought along some cloths and other textural items for her to the hospital. When we arrived at the emergency room, I could not believe the amount of people waiting there. Although very organized, the paramedics, Sam and I had to wait in a long line to "check in". Apparently two hospitals in the area had been closed down over the last few months and so Flushing Hospital was it for the whole community. A very sad state of affairs for our health care system, to say the least. The people in the hospital however were very efficient, and Sam got looked at immediately. Within a half-hour of checking in, the doctor was able to quickly replace the peg because....as I had thought, the hole had not yet closed up, so therefore no extended procedure was necessary. They did do a quick X-ray to make sure all was located in the right place, and so it was. We then waited about another 3-1/2 hours in a hallway (with 5 other patients), for proper transport back to Park Terrace and returned around 1:00 am in the morning. What was hard for me, besides the obvious, was that Sam really appears "normal" and so when everyone approaches her, doctors, nurses, X-ray technicians, etc. they all start speaking to her normally and then would whisper to me when she didn't respond, or would say something that didn't make any sense....what's wrong with her? I would just say...brain injury...but most people however wanted to know more.....why, how did it happen, etc. since she is so young as they would tell me. The last attending nurse we saw at the hospital, asked how long she had been in rehab., and then looked at her and said....she's going to do very well, I can tell, I can see it in her eyes. Thank god for the nurses who keep hope alive, and who seem to be the backbone of every hospital and facility I've been in over the last 4/5 months.