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Sorry I have been quiet the past few days. In addition to my home internet being down I spent a few days at my sister’s. On Tuesday she was having some chest pain and ended up in the hospital for a couple of days.

However, since my blog is about finding laughter in our lives, I’ll not bore you with the details of that fun adventure. Yes she is fine and now at home driving my nephew who turns 16 today crazy just like she was prior to her hotel, I mean hospital stay. Although it would have made a great family story if she would have waited until today for the pain, then he could have had years of therapy on how his mom caused him to sit in a hospital for his 16^th birthday. (Although we did tease her about that while there the other day – we can dream).

Now hospitals are a great people watching venue, especially the ER where you get to see all kinds of people. As much as I’d like to pick on the ER waiting room, sadly I cannot. By the time I had made the hour drive there, she was already in a room in the back. However, I will say, I did go to the waiting room and while I relayed her condition to some other folks, there were two random people just sitting there. This one lady almost fell out of her seat leaning in to hear our conversation. She wasn’t hiding her interest either as she looked at me dead on the whole time. If I didn’t know any better I’d of though she was a long-lost relative who finally decided to come out of the woodwork on this exciting day.

In the back, my sister had her own room (if you can call that small area a room). But it was all hers so it was comfy. No moaning roommate (yet). From where I was sitting I could see out to the nurse’s station and all the patients coming in and out. We all hate the wonderful gowns and watching people shuffle back and forth in them can be hilarious. From those that do their best to not show you anything to those that let it all hang out. And I do mean all hang out. My sister even cracked me up. She had on her shorts still so when it came time to shuffle to the restroom all that was exposed was maybe a 6in x 6in square on her back. This was enough to almost create panic in her mind. No one was supposed to see that spot!  LOL.

As I walked past the other rooms you could tell most of the other family members are having as much fun as I was. Once the “emergency” part is over, most of your time there is about waiting. Waiting to find out what is going on, waiting on more tests, and waiting to see if you will be held hostage for the night.

So many people are antsy in those little rooms. Let’s face it, unless you are the one in the bed who can take an “accepted” naptime, the rest of us fools must entertain ourselves. Moving back and forth, watching TV on the 6in screen where the sound is across the room watching shows you would never watch in the “real” world, perusing the hallways and peaking in other people’s rooms. If only they would let you pull back some of those curtains…

I wonder how long you have to be in your room before you stop caring what people see. You know the ones I’m talking about, the people who lie on their side with their butts hanging out for all to see?

Then you have the ones lying on their backs, sitting up, eyes closed and mouths wide open as they doze off. Drool dripping down the side of their mouth.

Some of the patients have their family by their side reading in the chair oblivious to grandpa almost falling out of the bed. (Must be reading that 50 Shades of Gray book).

My favorite is how the alarms on the machines are going off sending people into panic while the staff outside just goes about their business. Family members freaking out wondering if this means the person is going to die and why no one is rushing in with some paddles or something!  Yet, they casually pass by as if they hear nothing. Then, when the family feels the end must be near, they rush out and grab the first person in colored scrubs they see only to find they grabbed the food tech person who is clueless.

Finally someone roams into the room, pushes a button and walks out. Leaving everyone there dumbstruck that they didn’t even look at the patient to see if they were blue or something.

As I think of this, does anyone know what the white number is on the machine? The others make sense. I even tried Googling it. Yep, I was that bored. Turns out the answer isn’t as easy to find as you think. But a lot of people sure do ask though…cracked me up. (Now before you go googling it as well, it has to do with your resting breathing or something like that.)

Eventually they come to tell us, that they want to keep her overnight and run some more tests in the morning just to be sure all is ok. They tell us they have a room for her and they will be back shortly.

In case you didn’t know, “be back shortly” in hospital speak means two hours.

Eventually she is moved from her quiet little room to a slightly bigger room for two.

Yep, she has graduated to roommate status. Lucky her. And you knew the odds weren’t in her favor to have a roommate that would just sleep most of the time. What fun would that be?

Well this post is getting too long, so I will be doing a 3 part series I think. After all, we have one more day of fun and you definitely have to hear about my adventure with sleeping and her dog….

So, tomorrow we will continue this fun….

(Oh, and for those wanting to know, the internet at my house is still down. They say the problem is in their lines somewhere. Now they have to call out some other guy, to help the guy to find the problem – lucky me)

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~~~till we laugh again~~~