Dear Editor,
Just recently I had an unfortunate cardiac episode which needed urgent care and was rushed via ambulance to Langley Memorial Hospital emergency department. Well, that was like going to a third world country hospital!
Stretchers could be rushed through the halls expediently as they are too narrow – plus they were full of other stretchers, carts, and people. There were three other stretchers, with all their accompanying ambulance people ahead of us and very soon three other sets behind us. As I lay looking at the walls, they were dirty and pitted with gyp-rock torn off.
Finally in the emergency room after three hours, we finally saw one of the rushed and harried doctors. It turned out well for me in the end thankfully, but the Emergency Department was so small and crowded with carts of linen and carts of supplies, people and staff coming and going. The floors and walls were dirty.
There were lots of house flies buzzing around and landing on me in the stretcher behind the emergency room curtain. A police group were guarding a drugged-up young woman next door. Finally one of the doctors told my two children “Get your loved one out of here before they gets sick!”
I know it is not the doctors’ and nurses’ fault, but the hospital is far too small and not funded with our collected Langley property tax money – as usual.
It was very disheartening to witness just having been released from a clean, fantastic, well-run, but old hospital recently (St. Paul’s). It is a disgrace to our lovely Langley community that we cannot even have a clean, well-run emergency department to assist our large growing population. Heaven help us in a huge disaster scenario such as an earthquake!
Ras. Gosse, Walnut Grove
