Hi. My wife called me at work because she was having difficulty breathing. She has asthma and at that time had a chest cold, which was aggravating her condition.

We went to the Napanee emergency room because it is close to our new house. When we finally got to see the triage nurse she was sarcastic and not at all sympathetic to my wife’s condition. She wanted to know why we had not gone to a pharmacy to get her an expectorant (hello, asthma, can’t breath..!)

My wife was in considerable discomfort, yet we were asked to sit in the waiting room and were left there for 4 hours before we finally gave up and left.

Young moms were coming in with children that really had no outward sign of distress but were being taken in right away (10 minutes or less.) The same for high school kids showing up. This happened on 5 different occasions.

It seemed that the more elderly patients were just left to wait and were ignored. One woman we spoke to had been there since before noon and didn’t get in until after supper time. For us there was nothing moving.

I expected them to take my wife in right away to do something to ease her considerable discomfort, but apparently I don’t understand the rules of triage.

I thought that being a smaller town Napanee would be a better place to go than Kingston General Hospital, but I was wrong. As a result I would never consider taking anyone to either facility. If they were ever in a position to seek public funding or support I would turn them down.