CNN
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Parents who need to take a child to the emergency room are facing agonizing waits in many parts of the United States because of a shortage of hospital beds.
Hospitals across the country say they are being overwhelmed by an early surge in respiratory infections including RSV, influenza and enterovirus. As a result, pediatric hospital beds are more full now than they have been in the past two years, according to a CNN analysis of data from the US Department of Health and Human Services.
This crush of young patients filling hospitals now means those with less urgent illnesses may face long waits and sometimes days-long stays in the ER while they wait to be admitted. It also means kids who need cancer treatment or surgery may be sent home to wait until hospitals have beds.
Pediatric beds are so full in San Antonio that Elena Mikalsen drove her 17-year-old daughter to an emergency room 45 minutes away in the hopes that she could be seen more quickly there. She knew hospitals closer to home were already full.
Her daughter hasn’t been able to eat or drink since Thursday because of a sharp pain in her abdomen that gets worse after she eats. Last week, she began vomiting and having chills.
After blood tests and an ultrasound in the ER, doctors determined that she needed to have her gallbladder removed. It was full of gallstones.
“What’s happened with my daughter is, she should have been admitted last night, as someone who can’t eat or drink and is in pain and is a child,” Mikalsen said Monday.
Normally in a case like this, the hospital would put the person on the surgery schedule and keep her hydrated and comfortable until the procedure. But there aren’t any available beds, so her daughter is waiting at home.
Mikalsen knows this process intimately because in addition to being a worried mom, she works in health care.
She asked CNN not to name her employer because she wasn’t authorized to speak on their behalf. She also asked not to use her daughter’s name to protect her privacy.
“We don’t want to take a bed away from a baby, because that’s what’s really happening right now,” Mikalsen said. “Very little ones coming in who are suffocating, so they need all the beds.”
For now, her daughter is resting…
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