My daughter went to a party tonight, and got hurt jumping into the pool. As soon as I picked her up I knew it was bad, because she was crying and clutching her arm. So, off we zoom to the hospital.
We sat in the waiting room for over 3 hours, and saw the following;
Big guy with the spider bite on his leg. We watched the redness spread and deepen - ew!
16 y.o. guy came in with his parents; he was very drunk and incoherent. For some reason he was completely naked with a towel draped across his lap. You could still see all. My daughter and her friend certainly got an eyeful! He sat in a wheelchair next to me and retched occasionally into a basin provided by a nurse. This kid’s mom got bent out of shape and screamed at the nurse for being “disrespectful” for making them wait.
The obligatory screaming toddler.
A couple that came in because the guy was complaining of chest pains. Young dude, and they both reeked of alcohol. They left when the nurse told us all it would be a long time. Yay! Drunk driving!
My daughter and her friend were both soaking wet from head to toe. The kids thought it would be great fun to jump into the pool fully clothed. I’m sure they added to the general ambiance of the place as they sat there, dripping. :smack:
The reason we all had to wait was for some major emergencies;
The man who had a suspected aneurysm in his brain. His wife was so upset and had followed the ambulance in. She was elderly and sobbing. I just wanted to hug her, or something.
Two motorcyclists were in an accident - one went to another hospital and one to where we were. Do you know what happens when you slide across pavement? 'Nuff said there.
The helicopter brought someone in. Don’t know what happened there, probably a car accident.
I’m so glad to be home now. I never thought much about the emergency room doctors and nurses, but they definitely deal with a lot. Especially on a Saturday night.
Once upon a time I injured my knee very badly. But since a knee swelling to the size of a basketball is not life threatening, just super scary and painful, they made me wait and wait and wait.
Well, after hours and hours they finally get to me. As they start tending to my kneeds (>snort!<) this man comes in, toddler in tow.
Said toddler is SCREAMING. Not that I blame the kid - he had a dishtowel or some such squashed to the side of his head, and had so much blood pouring - and I do mean pouring, not just dripping - off him that it looked like someone had upended a bucket of paint on him. His shoes squished with blood every time he took a step. :eek: Eeewwwwwwwwwww!
Uh, yeah - take care of the screaming, bleeding, hemorraghing kid first. I’ll sit over here and swell up some more, m’okay?
My dad has been an ER nurse for 25 years. I’m absolutely sure that his slowest night ever would make my worst day seem like kindergarten. I don’t know how he does it, but I know that all his peers respect him, and so do I.
You do get to see another slice of life in the emergency room, don’t you?
Makes you want to stay the hell out of there, doesn’t it? Sometimes, though, you have no choice. Injured badly, but not life threatening on a weekend or public holiday? Where else are you going to go?
I had to take Ivylad back to the ER the day after his surgery because he was bleeding from the wound site.
We get there fairly early, and the waiting room is packed. Then, strangely, people started leaving. I thought they got tired of waiting, until one of the nurses said they were homeless people who had spent the night. :eek:
One of the last times I went to the ER, it was because Papa Tiger was bleeding from his cardiac cath site. (Turned out it was harmless, but we didn’t know and it looked rather alarming.) Needless to say, since it wasn’t bleeding profusely, although we got taken back to a room fairly quickly, we had to wait and wait and wait.
So while we were sitting there, we heard a woman next to us having a long, involved conversation. Only problem was, we couldn’t hear the person she was having a conversation with. So finally curiosity got the best of us and I went out and peeked. She was just sitting there talking to the voices in her head, apparently; the room was quite empty except for her.
When they finally came in to see Papa T. and apologized for the long wait, we assured them that we’d been more than sufficiently entertained in the meantime.
My local hospital won’t go by subjective chest pains alone for head-of-line privileges. You have to have other, objective symptoms of heart attack, stroke, or asthma like shortness of breath; pale, clammy skin; or be clutching your left arm. They got sick of people with relatively minor problems lying about having chest pains to get pushed to the head of the line while people with more serious problems were forced to wait. (The nurse will assess you first, of course, but if you’re lying, they’ll know it.)
I in the waiting room once when a man brought his wife in. She was shaky and very pale so they got her a wheelchair. She was complaining of a horrible stabbing pain in her head and while the nurse was questioning her, she just sort of slumped over and passed out. They rushed her into the ER and I’ve always wondered what was wrong with the poor woman. Was it an aneurysm? A stroke? A severe migraine? Allergic reaction? Wonder what happened to her after that.
Be glad that is all that happened. I was in the ER in May after feeling sick as a dog. I just thought I had the flu or something. After running a bunch of tests, the doctor said I was suffering from acute renal failure. And also that I had a heart attack. I was actually asked consent to allow heart bypass surgery. My response was there is no way I could pay for that, and could they just prescribe something and I could go home? The doc didn’t care, and just wanted me to consent for heart surgery. I had to agressively refuse such. I ended up checking out against medical advice. I thought when I said “I can’t pay for that” they’d just toss me on the street. I guessed wrong. The costs of heart surgery must be astronomical. I’d never have imagined this could happen in the US.
I’m certainly no expert, but wouldn’t life-saving surgery have been covered under some kind of charity program? They don’t ask stab-wound or gunshot victims for their insurance cards before sewing 'em up.
Or the hospital would have just ate the bill. The doc didn’t even bother with doing a wallet biopsy. I was the one who brought up payment issues. Had I not, and gave consent, I’d just have been wheeled off for heart surgery. It was just I had a heart attack, and needed surgery. That was that. This was a teaching hospital, and I guess the patient’s needs come first above billing issues. Had I dropped dead catching the bus outside the door probably the resident doc would have had his ass kicked. Since the lab reports indicated I had a heart attack, since by the book that means heart surgery is indicated, the doc ordered that I not leave the hospital.
:eek:
That makes my blood run cold, to think you could hear news like that and just leave. Money or no, hearts and kidneys are nothing to toy with. Did you at least get some kind of follow up care somewhere?
Good to hear that your daughter is okay. Three hours’ wait when you’ve come in under your own power isn’t too bad, though, all things considered. If ever you think you really have a serious situation on your hands, do yourself a favor and call an ambulance.
My dad suffered what turned out to be a minor stroke. He went to his doctor’s office, who told him to go immediately to the emergency room (and why they didn’t call an ambulance for him is really beyond me, but that’s another story). So my dad, accompanied by my mom, went to the nearest hospital and reported to the triage nurse. He was told to take a seat because other people were waiting already.
Let’s see, you have a 70ish man standing in front of you, half his face sagging, speech slurred almost to the point of unintelligibility, and you think it’s okay to let the man sit in the waiting room for nearly FIVE hours?!?My dad finally was taken into a room when he approached an emergency room nurse directly, and she was horrified that he’d been left waiting so long.
Since then, we’ve had a few heart-related health scares with my mom, and at my insistence we have called the ambulance each time. My mom got over her “embarrassment” at the neighbors seeing her taken away by ambulance, once she realized it meant she would be treated ASAP and not left sitting in the waiting room indefinitely.
Not much, actually. Although solely due to my own fatalistic choice. I just can’t believe how well this hospital treated me. Heart surgery can’t be cheap. And if I gave consent, they’d have just did it without asking about payment.
So what next? You caught the bus home after being told you were suffering renal failure and had a heart attack, and went home presumably? I need closure, dammit!
