At 1:47PM PDT I called Nikki at (386) 238-2285 because I still haven’t received word that mom has arrived at the Halifax ER. There was no answer and the call went to her voice mail; I didn’t leave a message.
At 1:48PM PDT I called (386) 254-4080, the main number for the Halifax Psychiatric Center where mom had been from mid-January to mid-March. I thought maybe they simply took her there instead of to the ER. I was told that she hadn’t been admitted today, but if she was being Baker Acted she might still be “downstairs” in processing. I was transferred there and at 1:50PM PDT, while I was explaining why I was concerned, I received a call from (386) 425-1911 from April, the charge nurse of the ER at Halifax.
April told me that there was no record at all of my mother being there since she was discharged on July 6, 2012, and that if my mother was anywhere in the hospital right then (or at the Port Orange location), she would see it on her computer. April was pretty adamant that my mother was not there. I thanked her and asked her to please call me if she did see my mom get admitted.
Then at 1:53PM PDT I called Woodland Terrace. Rachel answered the phone and sounded sincerely concerned when I explained that I was looking for my mother. She told me she would check with Sherri and asked me to hold on. I waited on hold for six minutes and then Rachel returned to tell me that Sherri told her to tell me that someone would call me right back.
I asked Rachel if she knew if Nurse Amy could have sent mom to the wrong place, and she said that Nurse Amy was gone for the day — “She’s a seven to three nurse.” — and that she would walk over to Sherri’s desk right now to hand her my phone number. (She was being incredibly nice.) I told her that wasn’t necessary because Sherri definitely has my phone number.
Update: At 2:19PM PDT I received a call from Susan, the Director of Nursing at Woodland Terrace. Susan told me that, “Halifax is in diversion right now.” I said, “Wait, wait. I don’t know what in diversion means.”
Susan said it meant that the ER was full, that they had no beds, that people were waiting three and four hours to see a doctor and were lined up in the hallways, so the non-emergency transport with my mom was turned away and she “ended up” in Orange City at Florida Hospital.
She said that a physician there said that mom is okay and wants to return her to Woodland Terrace, so she wanted to know if that was okay with me. She said she wanted to know if I wanted mom returned to Woodland Terrace or sent straight to Halifax.
I said that if there are people waiting on stretchers in hallways for three hours, it doesn’t sound like it would make much sense to send her back to Halifax, and Susan said, “Right.” She said that she “just want[s] to do right by” mom, and if there are any problems or mom gets worse at all during the night, she will definitely send her to an emergency care facility.
I asked Susan if she knew the name of the doctor at Florida Hospital who had said that mom was okay, and she said she hadn’t talked to the physician but had only talked to the charge nurse there, Heather, who she overheard talking to the physician, who said that mom was stable enough to return to Woodland Terrace.
Susan told me that Dawn was the night nurse and she would call me as soon as mom was back at Woodland Terrace.