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The Hospital

by Michelle Weisblat-Dane

I recently took my husband to the emergency room of the Colorado Springs Memorial Hospital. They were very good about getting him immediately back for triage. They then sent him to wait in this room with all the other people that didn’t need to be seen immediately.  Now I understand that hospitals are germ depositories. This room was a virus and germs’ dream come true. 

            They packed the people in this room like sardines, with every cold, flu and imaginable disease. They don’t even know what’s wrong with some of the patients. They just put them in this room. The body heat in this room was enough to make the germs think they’d reach nirvana. There was almost no air circulation in the room. The germs were having a field day in there, multiplying faster then rabbits.

            Ever since 9/11 they have beefed up their security. They stopped having people wait in the main lobby and started making them wait in this room instead. They now have a guard and a metal detector guarding the door. I figure they think this makes the patients safer.  At least in the old lobby, the doors opened up to the outside letting in fresh air as people came and went. Here the stale air is trapped. The smell is almost nauseating. You know with a smell like that, there has to be germs in the air.

Sitting over there were these viruses going, “Hey you want to get together we can make a whole new species and look at all these wonderful hosts around here to carry off our offspring.” That’s us, all of us healthy people sitting in there with our sick loved ones. We take a deep breath and we have now inhaled some strange disease. We’re a captive audience.

            I have sat there for hours and not once seen anyone come through and clean the place. Oh, occasionally someone will come through and pick up the newspapers or empty the trash. I mean no one sterilizes the room. Wipe it down, the floors, the chairs, the tables, the walls. You know, with that stuff that has the hospital smell that no one likes. You at least know it’s clean and germ free. They clean the patient rooms after every use, they change the sheets, mop the floors and spray it down with disinfectant.  Not this room they don’t.

            I realize that most hospital workers have a built up immune system and don’t notice the danger. Every time I’ve been in this room, even walking through it, I've come home and been majorly sick within a few days. In all seriousness the waiting area is a health hazard and something should be done.