Another Adventure at VA Hospital

Another Adventure at VA Hospital

For the last month I had a bad cough and now I had been having some bad chest pains for a few days so I went to the VA Hospital, which is always an adventure! After an hour's drive we arrived at 8:30 pm. We had never been there at night before and the parking lot was closed. It took us 5 minutes to find the night time parking garage and entrance. Upon entering the hospital we arrived at a set of elevators and had no idea where to go due to no signs. I picked up emergancy phone and got directions. We had to walk about a quarter of a mile through the hospital corridors to get to the emergancy room; this took another 10 minutes.

Then we checked in and we were seen by a triage nurse who asked me some questions then sent me for xrays. After that we were told to wait in the emergancy room lobby. We waited for 3 hours and were finally seen by the doctor. We were lucky, we were called before some of the other patients because I checked in with chest pains. Some people we talked to had already been waiting 6-7 hours to be seen!!!

I appreciate what the VA does for us but they need to improve their system! There were only 5 other people in the emergancy room when we got there, it should not have taken us 3 hours. Even though I checked in with chest pains I was not given an EKG. The doctor said the xrays were fine and told me that pain was due to blood pressure medicine I have been taken. It can cause a chronic cough and chest pains. She told me to stop taking that medicine and she would talk to my regular doctor on Monday to prescribe a new medicine for BP.

Your comments are welcome.