Let me take you on a journey, to the "best rated" ...

Let me take you on a journey, to the "best rated" Children's Hospital in the land... but wait, there is a catch, because I could not have had a worse experience at a hospital, period.
To start off, my wife and I had our first baby last week on Monday the 12th of September - finally discharged from Sutter Maternity in Santa Cruz on Friday night, 8pm. Saturday, 3pm we get a call from a lady working for Stanford Metabolic something or another department, informing us our newborn has tested positive for something and needs an emergency blood re-test. So she informed us the only lab open on the weekend is in Stanford, at the children's hospital. Of course we say yes and start packing up for a 2 hr drive (due to weekend traffic on HWY17) each way so we can try to be there before 6:30 pm - which we were told by this lady, admitting was open till then and blood drawing lab open until 9pm. So wait, this gets better just keep reading.

We arrive to the Children's Hospital at 6:09 PM, and figure out that the admitting was closed at 6pm, not 630 - so we were left to wander the 'still under construction' hospital to find the elusive Blood Drawing Lab. We must have wandered the halls for 50 minutes before returning to the front and calling the lady who sent us on this mission to the depths of hospitals bowels. She had no idea where we were supposed to go either, and the security guards are more concerned with scanning your ID and printing you out a sticker badge than actually helping you find where you need to go. So after waiting on the phone with the 'Lady' she tells us we are looking for E16 - we find the map but cannot locate any room under the name E16. At this point I had to get a wheelchair and start wheeling around my 5 days post c-section surgery wife because she couldn't handle walking any more. After our 3rd lap of the hospital, a man trying to be helpful sent us downstairs, and says -that E16 is right there. So we go down the elevator, finding two employees sitting on their break at the lower level, we ask them - they have no idea where E16 or the lab to get blood drawn is - but they show us a nurses station is right down the hall - so we go there. It was Oncology but we were running out of luck on everything else we tried up to this point so why not try this. At nurses station, nobody was there initially but then someone started trying to help us locate this E16, but it seems everyone who works at this hospital only knows where they are at that moment and no idea how to help you find where you need to go. Finally a couple of sweet female nurses came out to see our beautiful baby newborn girl. And one of those nurses Elizabeth, was ultra helpful and accommodating, dropped what she was doing at oncology to help console my sobbing wife after we were having such bad luck to this point. Take it, we have now been at this hospital for over an hour, and needless to say, we are exhausted. Luckily Elizabeth, was informed about what we were trying to find, she tells us that due to construction, places change location without notice each week and sometimes from day to day things are moving around the building into different locations. Elizabeth walks down this hallway to go to meetings, and since she is an aware person she knew that the blood drawing lab was over near where E13 is, but after we arrive to this location - we find it to be labeled as F17. Really good to know, and makes it super easy to find (in my most sarcastic voice possible). And now the real fun starts, the person at the front office of the Blood lab, has a very slight grasp of the english language. She begins by asking us if Mom or Baby is getting the test, then informs us that we need to collect a urine sample from our newborn, and assumed we had already done this. Basically she doesn't know what is going on. We get into the room and now the same lady is asking us why we are trying to collect a urine sample. At this point I almost lost it but calmed down enough to complete the procedure. Without Elizabeth we would have left defeated.