Yesterday was again spent in the clutches of a system that fails people without insurance. As I had posted on Monday, about my friend, who is ill – we were back at the emergency room supposedly for admission to the hospital to begin treatment for a very serious illness. Unfortunately, it took 2 1/2 hours to discover that an important piece of paper that needed to come from his doctor was not there.

We were faced with two choices:
1) Start the entire process over again – with the probability of and 8 – 10 hour wait or
2) go early in the morning to his doctor, get the paper and come back to the emergency room.

As it was now late in the evening, doing all that has to be done in the morning seemed to be the best choice.

All this was terribly wearing on my friend, but with encouragement he handled it very well. Of course, having to wait even longer was becoming a throbbing pain to him. I don’t blame him at all.

This has been an adventure or a roller-coaster ride. Unfortunately, there are no “carny” stands to win a teddy bear or other such trinket.

So, encouragement became the most important.