Urban Torture

Urban Texture? I got your Urban Texture right here -

Grady Hospital.

Downtown Atlanta.

Eight hours (8!) waiting in the emergency room waiting room for some underpaid nurse to get around to doing an X-ray/CAT scan, and for some overpaid doctor to bother reading said X-ray/CAT scan. I know Grady is busy and all, but good god! How much effort does it take to hold an X-ray up to the light?

By way of explanation - White's mum tripped on the extremely steep stairs down from the roof, and took a tumble. That was at 11:30 pm. We took her to the nearest hospital (only about 3 blocks), but in hindsight should've driven 30 miles or so to one that's not run by the three stooges. They left her lying in the exam area, in pain, until 7:30 am, when they finally let us go. Never even gave her an aspirin, from what I understand, much less a real pain reliever. And how many thousands of dollars are they charging for this crappy service? Nobody here wants government-run health care because they're afraid it'll screw up our wonderful system. Well I got news for you....

Oh, did I mention the Emergency 911 phone line put us on hold and never answered?? We must've held for 15 minutes before finally giving up and driving there ourselves, which I guess we should've done in the first place - just scared to move her at first.

Anyway, she's okay - bumps and bruises mostly. Thank goodness.

And Florence and I were treated to 8 hours of Soul Train and infomercials with the homeless out in the waiting room.



By the way, this photo was taken with the World's Crappiest Cell-Phone Cam. Seriously - Palm owes me a refund on the 25¢ they paid to put this thing in my Treo. Why bother?