A detour on Sunday

On Sunday early morning (overnight), Carl woke up with pain in his side. He thought that maybe he had slept wrong, but he was having difficulty getting a full breath. After getting up, he got on his computer and had some coffee, and thought that things were okay, or at least, not as bad as overnight. We got ready and were driving to church when he said that he didn't think he was going to be able to be comfortable sitting in church, and maybe we should go to the emergency room instead. 

We headed to Banner Gateway ER and they took him in pretty quickly...

The ER has different "zones" -- he was initially placed in the Green Zone...

... you notice that he is in nice slacks... we were definitely overdressed for the ER. The Green Zone room was a regular room, with glass sliding doors covered by curtains separating patients from the other parts of the Green Zone activity.

A sign in the room indicated that we would probably be moved to a test results waiting area before discharge, and, indeed, they did move him...

... to the Red Zone. In this area, there were just curtains around each area...

Each area had a lounge-type chair, and some of them had a side chair. Some of the areas were only large enough for the lounge chair, and right next to you was a curtain and on the other side of the curtain was another patient in their lounge chair, sometimes talking on the phone, sometimes coughing... it was pretty uncomfortable.

Most of the other people in the Red zone were there for just a short time; the nurse would come to give them their discharge instructions and they would be on their way. 

We had been in the green zone for about two hours when Carl was moved to the red zone. Then we waited for test results. The "provider" (they aren't called "doctors" because they might be nurse practitioners, or physician assistants, or MDs) came and gave a preliminary result of pneumonia, but he wanted to do a CT with contrast for further results. We waited for 1.5+ hours for the young lady to come to transfer him for the CT scan. 

Carl in the red zone

Ultimately, we were at the ER for about 7 hours, and went home with prescriptions for 2 antibiotics and a pain med.