The Stollery

After we were settled in at the RMH, I went out to get some supplies for the week at a nearby Safeway, and then we tried to get some sleep before our 7am appointment at the hospital the next morning. The Stollery is on the University of Alberta campus, and it's a bit of a maze the way it's all laid out, but we got it figured out after investing some time wandering the halls. I took a lot of pictures over the course of our stay there as well, so I can almost recreate our wanderings in this post.

The picture above is the entrance off the street into the Hospital. We didn't ever use that entrance, as we would park in the parkade and walk through a mile and a half of much less friendly looking hallways to get there. Ashley liked this part the best, but to be honest, she didn't like the rest of that place at all.

After you walk through the rainbow tunnel, it opens up into a very large and sunny atrium shown above. The main floor of this atrium is mostly shops and a food court and then it's hospital from there up. I wonder if the designer of this facility also worked on West Edmonton Mall, because it really reminded me of the water park, especially if you imagine that those large ducts are really steep water slides.

The unit we were going to was on the 4th floor. You can either take the stairs or, if you don't mind waiting around for a while, you can ride in the great glass elevators. These elevators made Ashley a bit nervous, but she had been nervous of elevators for a while, since it seemed like every time in her life that she took one, it was to go and see someone who was going to poke her with something.

After the elevators, you cross this bridge to get to the Children's portion of the Hospital which is called the Stollery. The area just before you go through those doors is called "The Beach" and it's full of toys and books for kids to play with. This is where we would go to get Echo's and ECG's done before the surgery, and where Ashley spent most of her recovery time after her surgery. We never saw these parts of the hospital when Ashley had her first stay here, as we were in the NICU up until they transferred us to the Alberta Children's Hospital in Calgary.

I designated myself as the "go get it" guy for everything, so I got to see a lot of the hospital and became pretty familiar with it over our time there. There's a lot more to it then I took pictures of, but it was hard to get a nice looking picture of places like the basement where we got our parking passes from. One of the nicest places I found while running errands was this treed cafeteria just off a library on the 4th floor. We brought Ashley here on our last day of her stay at the Hospital, but I think the sunny, quiet atmosphere was lost on her, and she just wanted to go home.

It was a pretty cool looking place all around, but what makes it great is the quality of staff they have there. The cardiology teams are rated as some of the best in the world, so if you're going to have a procedure done, that's the place you want to be. I was nothing but completely impressed with how professional and skilled the doctors and nurses were there. They saved our little girl's life, so I guess I really can't say enough about them. The real miracle though, is that it's all for free. I can't imagine what the bill would have looked like if we had to pay for all of Ashley's treatments ourselves. I thank the Lord every day that we live in the country we do.

A warning, this next part might be a little preachy. I've heard a lot of stories and complaints about the wait times for people trying to see a doctor in our province, and I admit that in the past I've also done my share. I remember being a little put out when I became old enough to have to pay my own Alberta Health Care premiums. They must have heard about it because we don't even have pay those anymore. I've also been admitted into a hospital a time or two myself and found that the bedside manor of some of the nurses there left me feeling like they took it as a personal insult that I had to get my tonsils removed.

All of this aside now, I can deal with the waiting or a grumpy unit clerk (If your default facial expression is a grimace or a frown, look into becoming a unit clerk), because we've seen first hand that they will do everything they can to take care of you or your child if either of you become seriously ill or injured. If you're in a waiting room for what seems like forever, you got to know that there's someone on the other side of the wall who needs some serious attention, and that someday that could be you. When that day comes, you won't care if someone with a really bad zit has to wait an extra couple of hours to see the team of doctors who are resuscitating your child back to life on a table in front of you.

That's probably a little harsh, but spending as much time in and out of hospitals as we have over the past couple of years, you overhear some people say some things that can be pretty insensitive. Our system isn't perfect, but you can't beat free access to some of the best expertise in the world. I know our family wouldn't be the same without it.