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Dear Editor

This letter is in praise of Emergency at the Battlefords Union Hospital. Like others I, too, have complained about sitting in Emergency for hours. We all think our case is very important, but we all have to wait our turn like everyone else. And the list of people sitting there gets longer.

This is a different situation and to prove an emergency is classed as an Emergency. To begin with my two sisters from Edmonton came to visit on May long. We went out for supper Saturday night. Later sister Ruth started not feeling well. She has had this problem before when she couldn’t breath properly and ended up in Emergency in Edmonton hospital. She thought she was okay to travel but obviously not.

It turned out that another doctor, not her regular doctor, had taken her off a certain pill and put her on another one. It turned out fluid was building up.

So Saturday night, when she turned pale and was gasping for breath we rushed her to BUH Emergency. They took one look at her, took her blood pressure and immediately she was whisked back into Emergency to a cubicle, put into a gown and onto a bed. We were allowed to go back and sit with her. There were nurses and a doctor right there. They sprayed stuff under her tongue several times. They took vials of blood, hooked her up to machines and then, all of a sudden, they wheeled in a portable x-ray machine and took pictures. The nurses never left her. The doctor kept coming and going. Then he came and told her the x-ray showed her heart was not working properly due to fluid build up. He said he did not like that certain pill she had been prescribed in Edmonton and he took her off it. My sister said she had been suspicious of it all along. As my sister only has one kidney, this adds to the problem. They kept her in the hospital overnight on medication to get rid of the fluid. And the doctor prescribed a different pill. We picked her up the next morning and she looked 100 per cent better, like her old self. She had no problem getting the prescription filled.

My sister could not stop singing the praises of BUH and Emergency. She said they even brought her a nice breakfast, which they did not do in emergency in Edmonton. This is someone from Edmonton being impressed with our hospital and the staff of nurses and the doctor. I thought it the right thing to do – to tell people about the hard working dedicated people in Emergency. 

Donna Neale

North Battleford