I've tried dozens of ideas along those lines and no solution works....

Like:
hserIN 65535, oops, [STR smallp\5, WAIT(","), STR largep\5\13]

problem here is the string size I expect to receive is variable, but the STR forces you to put in the string length. If it's shorter the function doesn't return anything, yet it doesn't time out. I'm ending up with the comma in my first string, even though I'm only looking for it as a seperator and after I receive the first serial data, every time thereafter there is a non-acsii character in the first byte of smallp.

If the data was always the same length it would be a breeze...