emergency

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Urgent Care Doesn’t Always Mean It Will Be Quick

Well it was Monday morning and I was driving down to the Urgent Care Centre at the hospital. 

urgent care doesn't always mean it will be quick

They used to call it “Emergency” and maybe they still do, but not at the hospital I was on route to. 

Urgent Care is for those who think they need a doctor and can’t wait for an appointment with a medical worker. 

Let me tell you, when I arrived there was a long line of people who were looking for some quick answers to their issues. The variety of problems was extensive, there was no order to who was next, and the people kept rolling in. 

It reminded me of going to the local barber shop when I was a kid. 

It was usually a Tuesday evening and us kids were lined up along the windowsill because all the waiting chairs were taken by adults. There were maybe 10-15 of us looking to get buzzed – yes, “buzzed”; that’s what barbers did to kids in those days. 

The cut itself didn’t take long, but there were so many of us, and there was no numbering system. You had to know who was in front of you and who was after you or there was going to be trouble. 

And that’s how I felt going into urgent care. There was a sea of humanity and no one was keeping track of the order in which we came in. 

… And, by the way, that was just to get to triage!  

I found myself calling out to others, “Who was last in?” I wanted to know where I stood. The guy next to me said, pointing, “You came in after the guy over there.” 

So I asked that guy who came in before him. He had no clue. 

A few minutes later I was taking charge of the room, figuring out who was next and what order we were moving in toward triage. 

… Man, has nobody been to an old-fashioned barber or what?!

The reason I was at the Urgent Care Centre was to have my eye looked at. A couple of days earlier, while playing hockey, a guy ran into me on the ice. It was a pretty good collision and we both went down hard. 

I didn’t think too much about it, but several of the guys asked me if I was okay. I just thought they asked because I was the senior citizen of the group. 

Later that evening, however, I noticed some flashing lights off in the peripheral of my left eye. I didn’t think that was a good sign. 

So Monday morning I was at Urgent Care, waiting for 3 hours to see someone about my eye. When I finally got to see a doctor, she didn’t get closer than 5 feet from me. She listen to my story and said, “We can’t check that here; we don’t have the equipment.” So she made me an appointment for the next day at the eye clinic. 

So much for Urgent Care. Maybe they should rename it to the “We Care Unit” and leave it at that. 

There wasn’t much “urgent” about any of it. (Stay tuned for part 2.)

Here’s the thing: Most of us want answers to our problems – fast … yesterday, if that could be arranged. But often, even when we think our issue is urgent, the answer takes some time. God knows what you need and when you really need it. Just take your concern to Him and let Him work out the timing. God’s timing is always perfect.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What urgent matter do you need to leave with God and His timing? Leave your comments and questions below.

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I Didn’t Know What Would Happen Next

You just don’t know what will happen next. Fortunately, most of the time what happens is what we expect or what we could predict will happen. 

But sometimes what happens next is so unexpected, so unimaginable that it changes everything for the immediate future or forever. 

One week ago there was a shooting in the emergency room of the Kingston General Hospital. 

I was there. It happened out of the blue and it altered the lives of everyone in that ER, at least for a few hours, and maybe for years.

The whole thing unfolded before me like in a movie. 

I used to play a video game called “Uncharted”. There really isn’t another game like it. The game combines action sequences, where you use the joystick to make the main character perform actions like climbing and a host of other things, with video scenes to fill in the background storyline and dialogue between the main characters. 

When I was playing the game, and Lily would come into the room, I would always say, “Sit down; it’s like watching a movie – only I also get to participate.” 

And that’s exactly like what I witnessed in the hospital emergency room this last week.

I went in to visit a man from my congregation; his wife met me there. 

We sat with him in a curtained off bay with other patients on either side of us and across the way from us. 

During my visit I heard a noise like someone falling into something. Naturally, I looked out the opening of our curtain to see what was happening. 

What I saw was three men struggling with each other, coming toward me. Two of them tackled the third man right at the opening in our curtain. 

The two men doing the tackling were corrections officers. The third man was an inmate from a maximum security prison.

The officers were struggling to contain the inmate because he had somehow managed to grab one of the correction officer’s guns. 

As they wrestled on the floor of the ER, about 6-8 feet from me, the gun went off. 

It was one of the most helpless feelings one could experience. There was nowhere to go. The gun was facing towards our bay, towards us, and we couldn’t do anything to stop it or get out of the way. 

The fumes of the gunshot made me cough; I tasted a grittiness in my mouth. 

I wanted to get out of the way; I wanted to protect the ones I was visiting. I was moving from screening the patient’s wife from what was happening on the floor, to comforting the patient who reacted with a jolt when the shot was fired. 

We could do nothing but wait – wait for the officers to get the gun from the inmate or for another shot to be fired. 

Within about twenty seconds, another shot rang out. 

Shortly after that the gun was secured and the inmate subdued. 

An innocent person was hit by one of the shots. There was a bullet imbedded in the wall of the bay I was in. 

… And the lives of twenty to thirty people had changed in a flash. It was so unexpected. 

Here’s the thing: Life often flows like you think it will, or you predict it will. But the unexpected can happen at any time, and change your life for a moment, an hour or forever. You don’t know when a moment like that will happen to you. You can only mitigate an unexpected life change by being ready for anything. Be ready to face God. It could happen any time. Don’t wait, delay or even ponder it – place your faith now in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour. Then you’ll be ready for the unexpected.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: Are you ready to stand before God? Leave your comments below.