i went with my mother to the mt.auburn hospital emergency room today. she started to get this rash last week that progressively spread from her body to her face. her doctor told her to go to the nearest emergency room and get it checked out when she told him about her sore throat. we got there about noon and proceeded to wait. there were two senior citizens, one in a wheel chair, shouting at each other because they were both deaf. a construction guy was holding an ice pack to his arm. a pretty young woman was in a neck brace. several other people were very good at hiding what was wrong with them. with my leg cast, people probably thought i was one of the patients. my mother kept on telling me it'd take 4 hours of waiting but i didn't believe her. i figured 2 hours at most.

we watched as people were called one by one into the examination room. although it seemed like first-come-first-serve, there were definitely people jumping ahead of us in line. i overheard a man dressed like he'd just working out complaining of heart pains. he went in ahead of us. a woman wearing a bandanna over head looked like she was undergoing chemotherapy. she went ahead of us too. maybe if we told the receptionist my mother was having trouble breathing (false) we'd have gotten faster service. one hour. two hours. three hours. it was starting to get kind of ridiculous. i kind of regret not bringing my computer when i saw a woman bust open her macbook pro. if the people who worked there knew it was going to take so long, they should've told us to come back later. maybe get some lunch. in the meantime we were starving, our only food some cough drops i had in my bag. despite all the quiet suffering in the waiting room, the hospital staff seemed particularly nonchalant, like there was no real urgency in the emergency room.

finally after several false alarms they called my mother and she went inside. i flipped through the stack of magazines on a nearby coffee table. about 30 minutes later she came out and said we could go. she said 3 different doctors checked her out, nobody knew what it was. so they prescribed a drug cocktail compromising of benadryl (diphenhydramine), prednisone (corticosteroid), and some zantac (to relieve any upset stomach side effect). by the time we left, we had been at the hospital for almost 4 hours.

we went to the cafe where we had a very late lunch before i went with my parents back to belmont to take a trip to the waltham costco. for dinner it was that american classic burger king. since i wasn't very hungry, i just ordered the whopper junior (just a dollar!) but did make up for it by eating most of the double jumbo servings of onion rings. by that time my mother noticed most of her rash was gone, and decided it was a good idea to go to the emergency room after all, despite all the waiting.

i helped my father unload supplies at the cafe before getting a ride back to my place. as promised, i did another small water change on my male guppy tank, making the water even more crystal clear than yesterday.