Every senior took same Phys. Ed. He had taken AP European as a Freshman because he was allowed to test out of World Cultures, AP U.S.History as a Sophomore, AP Human Geography his Junior year and would end his high school history career with AP United States Government and Politics.
Ethan and Max got very lucky in that their father was as good at math as he was at art.
Ethan was allowed to take his first three years of Math AP. He got to test out of and get credit for geometry and pre-calculus. He went ahead and took AP Calculus AB, BC and Statistics.
He did also take AP Chemistry and AP Biology, but since he wasn’t a big physics fan, his junior year he took regular physics. The housekeepers at Ethan’s house since he moved to Connecticut were legal, sponsored ladies from Guatemala. He breezed through the required three years of Spanish and chose not to bog down his senior year with any AP Spanish he could test on without the class.
Ethan, however, did not Cameron’s talents in art. He did have a great eye for photography. He took digital photography as a freshman to make his art requirement. He also took the one year computer programming his freshman year along with quickly getting rid of health ethics and public speaking.
He filled the rest of his senior schedule with semester electives. In the fall he would have Tim O’Brein: Vietnam & pursuits of moveable truths, a history class What If? he was really looking forward to taking. He thought Astronomy sounded alright. His older Brother Tad had taken it and really enjoyed it. He got into video production I in the fall and II in the spring. He got permission to take the Greek and Roman Myth in the fall and the Ancient Greek and Roman Civ. in the spring.
The spring also got him into the English class of The Criminal Mind, the history classes of Genocide and Human Behavior and Modern China instead of one history and one unnecessary science class.
He was also the new captain of the debate team and the head editor and the school paper. He loved to argue, which considering the number of siblings he had spread over two households and three colleges as well as a niece at Sarah Lawrence and a nephew at Ethan’s coveted school, Yale, no one was surprised.
Ethan was hot to be in the newspaper office the second classes were over. He had a story that he was burning to print. He had been working on drafts for weeks since the incident he wanted to write about happened and he couldn’t get into the computer fast enough. His only hope was the faculty advisor wouldn’t think it to harsh or unpublishable. He even knew what to call it.
“Where has common courtesy gone?”
It was a muggy but starting to cool down, summer evening. Richard & Leesa had taken the all the siblings and the grandchildren that were old enough to go on a trip back through time in more ways than one way. They went to the Kansas City Renaissance Festival. Though the family plane had flown them to the old area, somehow the older kids who still had friends in the area talked Richard and Leesa to make the trip back a road trip. A car rental company drove from a larger touristy town and delivered the appropriate amounts of vehicles to return the entire family back home. There were plenty of drivers and soon they found themselves back in the one town Richard hated even more than Leesa, Independence.
Leesa had migraines since childhood. Somehow her medicine had gotten mispacked or lost. The original two hospitals had closed for the new, state of the art, every bell and whistle hospital. Leesa’s headaches were crippling without her medication. Centerpoint was the closest hospital to I-70 and home. There were actually four emergency rooms in one. They were assured Leesa would be seen as quickly as possible. The dark sunglasses she wore to protect her eyes from light also helped with her anonymity. Ethan’s story about the ordeal practically wrote itself.
The waiting room was packed for a Tuesday night. The new hospital was second to none in the latest medical technology. But all the fancy medical stuff could not protect Leesa from a night of shear hell.
Very early on, the decision had been made that traveling any farther that night would not be a good idea, my brothers-in-law went across the freeway to The Comfort Suites and secured rooms for the entire family, thus keeping all the little ones far from Nini’s headache.
One of the old hospitals was being converted into an assisted living facility. But it had an excellent play area for the children that were patients or stuck there with sick siblings or parents. There was a relatively small section of the ER waiting room that was a virtually sound proof made of thick, clear Plexiglas. There was only one way in and out. Parents could watch their noise producing children while the children didn’t disturb the patients. Not so at the new hospital. They had a section at the front of the waiting room with toys attached to the walls and child size tables and chair, on polished concrete floors.
The problem was the three extremely obese women with five to six preschool and younger grade-schoolers between them for only one of the said children to be seen by the doctor. They were all three blabbering on their cell phones loud enough to cripplingly torture Leesa’s already pounding head and ignoring their children’s behavior.
Leesa was already sobbing from the pain before we had even arrived at the hospital. Someone in the middle of the large waiting room turned on the television, just above and behind Leesa’s head. When security was asked about turning it down by one of my brothers, he was told the volume was pre-set and could not be changed. At the time what ever show was on was a car chase with screeching tires, gun shots, screaming and the big finale crash. Leesa was driven to plug her ears with her fingers and bury the left side of her face in Richard’s chest. Richard also placed his larger hand over her right ear.
One of the children had found a stick from outside or a broken handle from a banging toy which he was using to do just that against everything within his reach. Then the children, who were yelling to each other to be heard over their parents’ conversations, realized their own shoes made a wonderful squeaking sound when they ran and dragged their feet.
By this time, one of my other older brothers went to the security guard and told the guard the children’s running and screaming were further hurting his mother, would he please ask the parents to get the kids to be less loud. The guard told my brother they weren’t too loud and were just being kids.
Despite being told she would be seen as soon as possible, we had been there well over an hour. That’s when Big Brother started and an inebriated couple started yelling about and at the contestants. At this point two parties had left for another hospital the next town over. We moved Leesa to the farthest side of the waiting room as far from the children as possible who had now taken to dragging the children’s furniture around the play area no one had thought to carpet.
Another patient, who had already been waiting three hours for a large gash in his arm, saw and heard the excruciating pain Leesa was in, approach the guard to try to intervene on Leesa’s behalf. One of the women heard his complaint and grabbed one of the offenders and screamed as she beat him on the rear, which the child laughed at and she let him go. At no point did Richard nor Leesa make their social status known in an attempt to be seen faster. Leesa would not allow it.
One of the loudest noises I have ever heard in my young life, some alarm tone sounded. This was immediately preceding an announcement of a code blue on the other side of the hospital. The announcement was followed by another of the tones, not once but twice. The announcement blared again and preceded a fourth alarm tone. Leesa was begging for death.
A four to five year old little girl came in with a painful earache. The child was trying many of the same things Leesa had tried. The mother begged security to help and he still refused. Then the loudest of the three started complaining into her cell phone about all the rude people who expected the kids to sit like statues in silence.
Leesa also has a condition many are unaware of, dystonic seizures. Three hours of waiting to be triage, Leesa’s body started to contort. Richard could not handle seeing his wife in so much agony. I am at a loss for a word that would describe the horrific pain Leesa was in by that point. Richard went to the triage nurse and told him who we were. Leesa’s legs and arms were completely twisted. One of us brothers were holding her legs, trying to prevent the seizure from breaking again. Richard and I were trying to prevent her arms, wrists and hands from breaking.
An extremely hateful male nurse came out to where Leesa was sitting in a wheelchair because Richard had gotten one himself and lifted his wife’s ridged body into the chair. The nurse curtly informed Leesa they knew who she was and they only had two in front of her to be triaged. He could plainly see her legs and arms twisting and he couldn’t have cared less.
The loud children were finally taken to an ER room. However within the following forty-five minute wait three more sets of alarms went off, two for security and one for housekeeping. Leesa was so tortured and we were all getting so angry. Richard was on the verge of demanding to see the charge nurse when they finally called Leesa to triage. At that point it was nearly four hours since we had arrived.
The triage showed Leesa’s blood pressure was through the roof, near stroke level, at one seventy nine over one eleven. After her vitals were taken, she was sent back to the waiting room to wait behind seven other people. Richard, Brock, Harley and I were the only ones that had stayed as Leesa ordered everyone to the hotel.
It was another two and a half hours before Leesa was taken back. It was clear the very kind doctor, Dr. Dan, did not like how Leesa’s wait and triage were handled. He began a litany of apologizes and explaining two other area hospitals had closed down their over capacity ERs.
He began to softly and gently ask Leesa about her pain’s origin, did she have these often, what does she usually do when the headaches and the attack begin? She told him about her medication bag being misplaced, mispacked or lost. He felt massive muscular knots in Leesa’s neck.
He quietly explained that while she did have one of her cluster migraines, she also suffering from a severe tension headache most likely from the heat and stress of the trip and the exertion of rowing a canoe full of small children for six hours. He told her he was ordering two separate pain medications, Delaudine and Toradol; Benedryl which Richard had said helped with the seizers; Zofran for nausea; Norflex, a muscle relaxer; Bethesda to bring her blood pressure down. He again apologized for the wait and security’s behavior as well as promising the guard would be personally addressed by himself with the chief-of-staff.
He immediately had nurse was sent into Leesa’s room to start an IV. Since Leesa was a very hard stick, the soft spoken nurse, Holly, used a tiny needle designed for small children and got the IV started on the first try. It was one of the only times the needle phobic Leesa barely felt a thing. She stepped out to collect the medications and was gone no more than ten minutes with an IV bag and medications. The Benedryl was started first which eased the posturing caused by the seizer. Holly dabbed Leesa’s tears before she began administering the remaining medications.
Leesa’s pain quickly dropped from a ten to a seven. Richard was instructed that if Leesa’s pain level had not dropped below a three in twenty minutes, someone was to come find her and she would ask the doctor on further and or different medications.
Though the pain eased to a five, a larger dose of Delaudine was administered. It was four o’clock in the morning before Leesa was stable with no pain. More than eight hours after her arrival, Leesa was finally released. Dr. Dan wrote her a migrane prescription to get her back to Connecticut.
The four of us loaded a very groggy Leesa into the remaining vehicle and drove the short distance to the hotel.
Richard insisted no one disturb Leesa. She slept straight through until nine o’clock the next morning. The friends were visited while Leesa slept. Richard wanted to give Leesa one more day of rest before continuing. That day the company plane would be able to fly in and have them home in only a few hours. Leesa traded off sleeping in her husband’s arms and frequently soaking in the hot tub watching the kids all play in the pool.
None of us were happier to take the short drive to the Lee’s Summit Municipal airport and leave for home more than Richard. He made the executive decision that if they did this type of thing again, more help would come with us and we would not drive back, even if Richard had to buy a new plane on the spot.
Here’s what made me so angry and have a burning need to write this article. Those loud, rude and uncaring people in that waiting room didn’t have the common courtesy to take the children to frolic outside and yell into their phones. Where has common courtesy gone?
Ethan was impatient with the printer as he waited for page after page to print. The advisor warned him it was most likely going to have to be edited down, but he would give his markings back the next day. But he also told Ethan it was one of his best public interest papers Ethan had even done.