Gall Bladders have an expiration date

This last Friday, about 2pm, my sister texted to say she was at the ER with my mom.
She texted again "they think it's her gall bladder, emergency surgery."
That was about 3pm.
I had to get to the show, and at 7 she texted "they can't find a surgeon, so may be tomorrow."
I asked about the definition of the word "emergency" and from there we had some fun at Kaiser's expense.

By 7 there was no surgeon found, OR they were booked, depending on mom's story or my sister's.

Ok, so surgery scheduled at St. Joe's  Saturday at noon.

We arrive about 12.30 at the New Improved Jewish/St. Joseph's complex. It looks and feels very much like an airport.

However, unlike an airport or any hospital I've ever been in, it was empty.
Deserted.
Begin Walking Dead jokes.

Seriously. This enormous, spacious waiting area with enough seats for 75 people is completely deserted. Ther's a big screen TV with surgeon's names on it, but no patients. The coffee cove says "coffee at the front desk".

But there is nobody at the front desk.

After an hour ---the surgery was supposed to take under 2 hours---Harper and I broke into the desk. We located hot chocolate but no coffee. Harp came up with the idea to look for a KEY to the cabinet below the Keurig. We returned to the desk and Harp found the keys in a pen holder. SCORE. We opened the cabinet and VOILA, coffee! We made some, returned to our seats and waited for the coffee police. There are no people in the hospital, but we did see security cameras. No one emerged. We made two cups of hot chocolate and three cups of coffee.

After two and a half hours I called the number I was given from a waiting room phone and was told they had no information, she was still in surgery.

After two and half hours and thirty seconds, my sister got a call from someone saying mom was in recovery.  She could not get a human when she called back, so she had to try several times. Once she got a human, she was told "Just kidding, she's still in surgery, it's taking longer than they thought."

So to recap, we are three hours in to a 1-2 hour surgery, and Karie and Harp go downstairs to find a cafeteria of some kind. While they're gone a surgeon appears--he is twelve years old-- to tell us the long story of mom's now removed gall bladder and an errant gall stone that found its way into a tube it was not supposed to be in, and that the tube is too small for their instruments. So...after trying to fetch the stone with a surgical instrument larger than the tube for an hour or so, they decided they couldn't get it. A Gastro Bannaist has to be consulted. And he will go through mom's esophagus to fetch the stone. Look at a map of the human body, your esophagus and gall bladder- and attached tubes- are no where near one another. I just smile and say "Ok", because I did not go to medical school. He repeats "In conclusion, we need a Gastro Bananaist to perform the procedure because our instruments are too big and we are not allowed to play with their instruments. So we have to find one."

..... I'm thinking....we had such luck "finding" a surgeon for an "emergency", this should go well.

So Mom cannot eat Saturday, because on Sunday the Gastro Specialist will do the procedure, and she cannot eat.

They 're looking for a guy....
They're looking......

Ummmm..... in layman's terms: "We can't find a guy to do it tomorrow, so stay here in the hospital and wait until MONDAY when we think we can find a guy."

So she stays Saturday night and they let her have some broth, because she hasn't eaten since Friday morning.

And Sunday she just chills in the hospital all day, alone, because nobody works there.

Today we went to  pick her up after her procedure. They Found A Guy. She was done at 12.30, we got there about 1.15. We're told they're getting her paperwork together. At 2 nobody had come in to check on her, or explain anything, so Karie, Tracy and I got some lunch. We got back at 3 figuring surely she'd be ready to check out....funny. That's funny. We waited another 30 minutes for paperwork, by then mom was dressed and ready to walk herself out. She determined she was too woozy and needed a wheelchair. Which we waited for for 40 minutes.  We then waited for the prescription that had been called down two hours before and was "waiting for you" for ten minutes.

So, to sum up:
-Nobody works at St. Joe's.
-There are no patients at St. Joe's.
-No surgeons work for Kaiser, particularly on a Sunday.

This is not a single or isolated incident. This is not an unfamiliar story. Ask a physician or nurse, and they will apologetically tell you that this is how it is now.

According to one nurse, Costa Rica is the place to go for surgery, that's where all the surgeons have gone.
And other sources report that KAISER will pay your med school bills if you agree to come work for them.
They got that idea from Maurice on Northern Exposure.

And there you have that.
Scene.