I brought a family member here with appendicitis earlier this year. Once we got past the emergency room, the operation went smoothly and the pre- and post-operative nurses were excellent. The emergency room was another story. My relative had an immediate violent allergic reaction to something they were given via their IV line. I hit the call button just after the person who administered the bag had left, but had a lot of trouble getting a nurse to come back in. First we got a nursing aide and then another. They would look in, see the patient red as a beet and convulsing, and scurry out again, presumably up the chain of command. When the nurse finally came in, I thought we were saved at last, but she said, very nonchalantly, that the reaction was a symptom of the appendicitis and I shouldn’t worry. I asked why the patient had been calm before and then started reacting after the bag had been added to the IV, but she reiterated it was the appendicitis, and left! The patient couldn’t even speak, their whole body was rigid with tension and spasms, their eyes were staring into space. I hit the button again, called out, ran into the hall calling for help, and finally an aide came in with a worried look on his face and removed the bag. The reaction slowed soon, and within a minute or two my relative was calm again. Later, when I read the medical record, it indicated that the patient had indeed had an allergic reaction to the medicine. But the record carried no hint of the drama of the circumstances or the failure of the nurse to identify it. For several hours after the reaction, I felt like the staff were punishing us for having disagreed openly about its cause. The doctor came in and backed up the nurse’s claim of no allergic reaction, even though, I imagine, it must have been the doctor who entered into the record that an allergic reaction had, in fact, occurred. They kept us away from the operating ward, telling us someone would take us, but sending no one. After waiting, dozing on and off in my chair next to the cot, I eventually realized no one was coming. I walked around the emergency ward and everything was quiet. The nurses were quietly sitting at their computers. The doctor was in a large room with a male aide, who was helping her move large stuff around. So there was nothing more important keeping anyone from attending to us. They were just playing around with us. When we finally got to the surgery ward, the nurses there, who, as I said, turned out to be highly capable and professional, said they had been waiting for us for a long time. So it was clearly the emergency room’s fault. I’m really creeped out now by Lansdowne emergency room’s lack of professionalism, to say the least. I feel that they endangered my family member’s life for the sake of their own ... I don’t know what — ego? bathroom break? spite? In future emergencies, I will head to Stone Springs or Reston.
To top it all off I got a letter from a scary bill collector dated 10 days AFTER the payment to the surgeons had gone through my bank.
