day 1: emergency room

An ordinary Friday afternoon for my child and Ate Malou.  They were on the street outside the house, playing.  Here comes a car, moving a bit too fast, and they rushed to get out of the way.  Ate Malou slipped on the street gutter and took a bad fall.

I brought her to the emergency room of a nearby private hospital.  The x-ray showed a badly fractured left thigh bone, and they said they would need to operate.  However, I will need about P120,000.00.  The other option, they said, was to bring her to the National Orthopedic Center in Quezon City.  They could help call an ambulance for the transfer.

I asked a neighbor to watch Ate Malou in the emergency room and rushed home to gather my wits.  I packed a bag for her, and realized that my children would be alone in the house.  My husband was at work and I could not reach his mobile phone.  I asked another neighbor if she would take care of my kids while I transfer Ate Malou to another hospital.  I packed their things in a big basket, moved them to the next house, and locked my house.  My eleven-year-old promised to behave.  My four-year-old cried when I left them.

We got the ambulance from Cavite to Quezon City.  We were at the emergency room of the Orthopedic Center by 8:30 pm.  The staff put Ate Malou on a metal bed with nothing but a sheet on it and put us on queue for the registration, assessment, and x-rays.

The hospital was full of Friday night emergencies.  They kept coming: road accident casualties, kids run over by tricycles, an old man whose buddy hit his leg with a metal pipe during a drunken argument.   There were crying mothers, crying children with broken bones, crying old women with more broken bones.  There was blood on the floor, a shoe left by a patient, a bloody towel thrown on the corner.

The emergency room staff were efficient, but it must have been a very busy night.  Compared to the other patients, Ate Malou seemed to be the least likely to die, so maybe that was why she was not a priority.  She kept lying in the metal bed for six hours, until I insisted that they find her a bed with at least a mattress on it.

The doctor ordered four x-rays.  I had to stand in line to pay for them first, before she could be queued for the x-ray room.  That took a couple of hours.  When the x-rays were ready, the doctor said she had two options: leg surgery, which could be done as soon as we had the implant and the money ready, or she could stay in the hospital for six months, her leg in traction, hoping her bone would heal itself enough to be placed in a cast.  I asked that the laboratory tests be started in preparation for clearance for surgery.  I signed papers to have her admitted to the hospital.

At 4:00 am on Saturday she was brought to the charity ward.  There was no space available inside the ward, so we had to stay in the corridor.  I borrowed a chair from the nurse station so I could rest.  At 6:00 am they gave me a prescription for painkillers, which I had to buy from the drugstores opposite the hospital.

By the time people would already be having their breakfast I started calling people to tell them what happened, either to help us find a companion for the kids, money for the surgery, or contacts at the Orthopedic Center.

We have just begun.