Am I Awake Yet?

I am starting to crash. I am so tired. We ended up in the emergency room yesterday evening because we couldn't control The Little One's fever. When she got up to 104 my wife and I skedaddled to the ER with her. We got there a little before 7 PM and her temp was 103. We got to see the nurse who took vitals around 8 PM. Temp at that time was down to 102 and she went and got some medication to help reduce the fever and sent us back out into the waiting room.

At about 9:30 PM we were put in an observation/treatment room and waited for the doctor. It turned out that there were only two doctors on duty and they were pretty busy. About every hour and a half a nurse would come in and check vitals and The Little One's temperature was slowly going down. She fell asleep around 10:30 PM but woke up about every 45 minutes and would ask if we could go home.

At about 1 AM I was getting really frustrated and tired of this whole waiting routine and asked a nurse how much longer it would be. She apologized and said hopefully the doctor would be in soon. At 2:45 AM The Little One woke up and proceeded to scream and cry because she wanted to go. My wife and I couldn't console her to stop crying. I finally picked her up and walked around the room and into the hallway with her screaming about wanting to go home. It took about 10 minutes before a nurse came by and I said if a doctor doesn't see us soon we were going to leave.

At 3 AM the doctor came and examined The Little One. I showed him the prescriptions the pediatrician had given us the day before and he decided that a couple of injections of antibiotics were needed because he thought one of her ears was becoming infected. A couple of nurses came in and gave the injections and The Little One was a real trooper. We finally left at 3:30 AM.

There's got to be a better way to run an ER.