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Let me preface this whole "rant" by saying that the "police" at MDA have never been a problem for me anytime in the past few years we have been going there. I am also quite sure that if we needed help of some sort that they would be right there to help.

Today, however, was more than a little outside the bounds of normal.

As Lisa and I were walking in, like we normally do, and like we have done a hundred (dare I say hundreds?) of times before we were passing the elevators (we weren't even halfway past them yet) when the guard at the desk (who was talking to someone else at the time), past the elevators, raised her voice and demanded we stop. As there were other people in the hallway and I had never been addressed as such before I kept walking until I got even with the desk (the hall runs past it) and she stepped out and stopped us, demanding what we were doing there. We responded that I was a patient and was headed to an appointment.

She then asked to see my arm-band ID bracelet. I told her I didn't have one because I hadn't gone to the appointment yet (they give you these flimsy ID bracelets, obviously not long-term keep-sakes) and then she proceeded to ask me again where my ID bracelet was. I told her again I didn't have one yet and she scowled at Lisa and I and then decided to "let us go".

Of course we couldn't get away so easy as we were subjected to a lecture about why she had stopped us, where she repeated herself twice and THEN "let us go".

You'd think that they would worry more about people LEAVING the hospital than coming in. I mean if I was rolling a cart full of meds that would be reason to stop me with that tone and ask what I was doing. Not some sickly looking cancer patient who was headed to an appointment. The way she was protecting that hall-way you'd think it was the white-house or maybe norad.

So after all this I decided that I should probably tell someone above her about her overly zealous behavior, and noticed that the UT MDA Police website has a "file a complaint" form. The drawback? It doesn't work. Guess I know why their complain levels are so low.

This is a one in a hundred event to be sure, but I still don't want to be faced with this kind of behavior every time I have to enter the building on a weekend. And would like corrective action to be taken to see that it doesn't happen again. It's not like I WANT to be going into the hospital, I don't need the whole experience to be made worse because some guard thinks she is defending the hospital from cancer patients.


~B.
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