My Seventeen-Hour Wait in an Edmonton Emergency Room

I took my daughter to the Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton after work. Because she’s a teenager and deserves her privacy, I don’t want to share too much about why, but I will say, with her permission, that it was a mental health concern. I was worried about her safety.

The question I couldn’t shake was: The next time she was on her own, could I trust that she would be OK?

I had decided to go at that time because it was a weekday evening. Not too early, and not too late. I figured it would be better than going on the weekend, and still I expected to wait five hours, maybe even seven. I was okay with that.

We packed snacks, books, chargers and headphones. I put her medication in my purse and told her to bring a change of clothes. She even thought to bring her toothbrush, just in case.

When we arrived, the waiting room was about three-quarters full. The line for triage was short. We were second in line and were triaged quickly. I explained as best I could what was going on with her and why we were there. There had been an incident earlier in the week that really scared me.

In hindsight, I wonder whether I should have stressed the urgency more, how I could have done that, and whether anything I said at triage had much to do with why we ultimately waited 17 hours.

We found seats next to each other and were in good spirits for the first four hours. There were a lot of crying babies and toddlers. My daughter was shocked and checked in with me to make sure that they would be seen first.

Somewhere in those first few hours, an announcement came on saying all the beds were gone and nobody would be admitted overnight. They were moving to a different model, and we needed to put our bags on the floor and not on chairs to make sure everyone had a seat.

Otherwise, they’d have to limit family members, which they never wanted to do in a children’s hospital.

We were okay with all of that. We didn’t need to stay overnight, and our bags were already on the floor.

I needed help almost as much as my daughter did. I felt like I was failing in every conceivable direction. Rationally, I know that’s probably not true. I know I’m an engaged parent. I know my kids enjoy being around me. I know I’m a reasonably intelligent person.

But still, there’s only so much one person can do. I felt stretched thin.

I’m a single parent with two neurodiverse kids. Not the kind of single parent who has a co-parent on the weekends, or every second weekend, or even for a month in the summer. No, it’s just me.

Although I was raised in Alberta and have lived much of my adult life in the province, my kids have lived largely in B.C.