Emergency Room Nightmare!

Okay, so hopefully I haven't bored anyone to death yet with my few blogs I've posted.  I never promised they would be good, just practice so I can get better!  Let me tell you a story about a long, boring, wasted Friday night!  My wife and I host a married's group from church and that part of the evening was definitely not wasted, but after everybody left I was feeling a lot of pain in my wrist from a recent carpal tunnel surgery.  After some convincing my wife talked me into going to the emergency room since that is what my discharge paperwork from surgery suggested if my pain medication stopped working of if any complications arose.  So we drove the 30 minutes to JBLM to go to Madigan. ( I only recently found out I could have gone to Good Sam Hospital ER here in Puyallup).  After checking in and getting my vitals checked out we went to the waiting room to patiently wait our turn to be seen.  We figured it's Friday night, a four day weekend for most soldiers and that the ER would probably not be very busy, boy were we wrong!  After watching Toy Story 1 and 2 we were still waiting.  We overheard a lady next to us saying she had been there waiting to be called back since about 6pm.  We had arrived around 9:30pm and by the time we heard her talking it was well after midnight.  I believe she finally made it back around 12:30 or so.  I tried to check out to leave around 11 when we realized how long the wait might get, but I was informed by the desk staff that active duty personnel couldn't leave once they had checked in.  After witnessing about a half dozen people leave I and the desk staff leave at midnight, I checked with the back desk staff to see if I could check out and just see if I could ride my pain out at home.  It was around 1:30 am and they said if I waited it would probably be ONLY another couple of hours.  I told them I'd rather go home in pain since I'd already been waiting over 4 hours.  So they finally let me check out and I was able to leave the hospital.  I was still in pain, but I wasn't ready to sacrifice even more time when it was unsure when I would be seen.  I thought being recently discharged from surgery and having a pain level of 10 would ensure I was seen quickly, but apparantly it's not that important.  I remained in a lot of pain all day Saturday and my wife convinced me on Sunday morning to try again.  This time it went really quick.  I was prescreened and my vitals were taken within five minutes of arriving.  A physician's assistant saw me within 15 minutes of that and I was sent to x-ray.  Almost immediately my x-rays were taken and I was sent back to ER where I was seen again by the PA within just a few minutes.  He then proceeded to call the surgeon on call to see what they could do for me.  The surgeon arrived a few minutes later, checked out my wrist, told me I needed a wrist brace and prescribed me new meds for the pain.  I was so amazed!  What would have taken all night on Friday was done within less than two hours including getting the prescription filled!  I guess God knows what is best, but I do feel bad we ended up going on a Sunday and missing church.  We did at least listen to a cd teaching on the way back home and finished it when we got in the house.  Thank God they were able to do something for the pain and I thank my lovely wife for being so patient with me while I was such a pain in the behind!