New Form of Punishment

I've again found a new form of cruel and unusual punishment for criminals. Emergency rooms. Saturday night (technically, very early Sunday morning), Sadie ended up going to the ER in the middle of the night for a fever that we couldn't get to go down. Forunately/unfortunately, her situation wasn't as serious as when she had to be admitted last January. The good news is, she was diagnosed with a double ear infection and sent home. The bad news was, the four hour plus wait (from 1:00am to 5:30am). I don't get it. I guess maybe because ER's can't refuse service to anyone, they have to make it somewhat inconvenient. I don't know...I'd like to assume there's some way to call in a few more doctors and speed things up.
Our Children's Hospital has fantastic doctors and high ratings; but if you walked in and sat in the huge waiting room, containing only one 3 1/2 inch TV you wouldn't know it. The whole process is unnerving. First, you have to "check in"...tell the nurse your primary complaints and undergo basic checks like heartrate. Then you sit and wait to have them "register" you...provide basic insurance and personal information. After that, you get to sit down again and wait for triage. Triage is in another room...temperature, weight check, heart rate, etc...From triage you MAY be assigned to a room. In our case, we were just assigned to a "new" waiting area. (The one with the fabulous TV and swarming with other sick kids) There we waited for another two hours. We finally got a room at about 3:00am. They then told me it would be another 1-2 hours before the doctor could see us, so to feel free to sleep (yeah right, with screaming children just outside). We tried...but hospitals aren't known for being a nice place to sleep. First we saw a resident who diagnosed the ear infection and wanted her to drink something before we left to bring down her heartrate. He only brought me a bottle and a big cup...great! I asked for a sippy cup..."hmmmm, yeah, she's a little old for the bottle, she'll make a mess with the cup...well, I dunno where sippy cups are...I'll try to find one". Thanks doc. An hour later Sadie and I were both dripping with Pedialite. At about that time, the "real" doctor came and reconfirmed the prior diagnosis. Then, another half-hour later, the nurse came with a prescription and discharge information. The entire process was torture (I think surely in part because of the time of night). What's a parent to do?
I was so tired coming home that I came home to give Jake her presciption to go fill it while I put Sadie to sleep for a few minutes. By the time I got Sadie to sleep, the other kids were awake (Jake was still at the pharmacy). He got home and I woke up Sadie and got her to sleep, again, before I got to close my eyes. I'm so weak, it's been a long time since I pulled an all-nighter...they're not as much fun as they were in the "good ole days" when I'd pull an all-nighter for fun.