Fucking hospital ERs

The BBQ Pit
1

Don’t get me wrong - I’m grateful that I can count on guaranteed medical care in this country (and others, with my insurance from work). But when you tell me you’re going to come with a painkiller injection before my fucking x-rays and you don’t, fuck off. I didn’t enjoy spending five more hours in more and more intense pain. So you poked and prodded me, took two sets of x-rays, told me I had a broken rib and major trauma to the area, and gave me some prescriptions. Was it too much to ask for you to come through on your original promise of painkillers so that at least I could sit there in the waiting room feeling slightly OK during the hours while you dealt with everyone else? Was it too much t have a nurse there when I needed her, not just to give me some fucking Advil. “They said they’d give me something two hours ago.” “Oh, really? I’ll go ask them.” So she fucking disappeared forever. How many fucking x-rays do you need to determine I fractured a rib-bone? Fine, send me home with a prescription for Vioxx and Percocet, but give me a fucking note so I can at least take the day off work and rest tomorrow. Thank-you-very-much. I could have done the same on my hunch and bought Tylenol codeine #1.

Although, I have to say, the Vioxx is quite amazing… :smiley:

  • s.e.
2

Hey! You gotta give 'em a break…it’s you who waited a couple 'o days before you went to the doctor! :wink: Maybe they read this board. And…ummmm gimme one 'o those Vioxx!

3

Oh Percosets…my favorites…

Sorry about the bum treatment.

4

Well, not to ruin a good rant, but I’ve been the ER twice in the last month and I was impressed. One time was just to visit, as I met a friend there whose baby was transported by ambulance from the town she lives in. They were utterly cool about two of us being in there to support her even though we were 100% in the way of the medical staff. The second time was for my stupid cat bite, and they handled me pretty expeditiously given that I wasn’t in pain or bleeding. Granted, it was annoying how everything had to be signed off on eight times (First the med student sees me. Then the resident. Then the chief) but hey it’s a teaching hospital.

5

How long are you going to whine about your damn rib?

or -

give us the juicy details! :smiley:

On the bright side - ER’s use triage - the longer you are left to wait, the LESS you have to bitch about.

(be thankful you have never seen the ER “suite”)

6

Actually, they told me I was high priority based on my breathing problems, and I did get into radiology pretty fast. I’m just mainly pissed off that the initial dose of painkillers - which I saw on my chart - was never given to me. :mad: Ugh. But you gotta love Vioxx and Percocet… yummy. :stuck_out_tongue:

  • s.e.
7

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH DEATH TO YOU ALL HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I WILL KILL YOU ALLL HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH DEATH TO YOU ALL HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I WILL KILL YOU ALLL HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH DEATH TO YOU ALL HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I WILL KILL YOU ALLL HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH DEATH TO YOU ALL HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I WILL KILL YOU ALLL HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!

8

That’s so hilarious. Encore! Encore.

9

This doesn’t excuse the person who promised you pain meds, but if you were in the ER alone and were going to be treated and released, they wouldn’t (and couldn’t) have let you drive yourself home with a narcotic on board.

OTOH, if you were there with someone who could have driven you home, then they screwed up.

Hope you feel better soon!

Quasi

10

Er, chew it, that was strange. :confused:

And scott evil, having worked in the health care field, I’m really sorry you had a rough time of it. I expect the nurse really honestly wasn’t trying to be an ass, but made a mistake due to whatever else she had on her plate at the time. Still, it’s crappy when stuff like that happens.

Glad you got some good zingers later, though! :slight_smile:

11

I am not usually very impressed with ER’s either. Now, I’ve been to a couple where I was treated well and given good care. But you gotta wonder where they get this stuff they show on TV–out of their rear ends, I often suspect. I’ve never seen ANYONE in a hurry in an ER. Not even when I brought my 1 1/2 yr old son in the time he got into my Extra-Strength Tylenol and downed a couple. I took him to a very NON-busy ER in Branson and it was nearly an HOUR before they brought the charcoal solution for him to drink. I mean, how long could that have taken, to get the stuff and mix it with the chocolate milk? He is A-OK now, but it really got on my nerves, worrying about him and wondering if they had forgotten all about us. And I don’t even want to get into the times I or my family have gotten out-and-out rude treatment from medical personnel!

I wonder if you have to be bleeding from several orifices to convince the ER people that you really need help FAST! :eek:

12

No, I told the triage nurse I had come in from the West Island by bus and metro (takes about an hour). She wrote it down. The glitch was that apparently the resident doctor who attended to me prescribed the initial painkiller improperly, so they had to scrap it or something. Thing is, they took me right to radiology and said I’d get something as soon as I got back to the ER, but that didn’t happen.

I have to say, a hospital ER is one of the few places you can look like crap, and wince and scream in pain, without anyone thinking you’re psycho. (Although a psychotic man later showed up and had to be taken away by security. Another story altogether.)

Oh, and Nenya_Elizabeth:

She wasn’t being an ass at all. It wasn’t her fault. She did her job, wheeling that all-encompassing electronic thingamagig into the waiting room, taking my temperature, my blood pressure, my pulse, and giving me (lame-ass) Advil.

Thanks. I’m feeling much better, due to rest and heavy painkillers. I’m still consulting with an online medical friend as to what I should or shouldn’t do with my left arm. I still have some pain, but it’s certainly not as bad as it was 24 hours ago.

Cheers, thanks a lot. Downs more painkillers… wheee!

  • s.e.
13

You think that’s bad??

The emergency room sent me home one day telling me nothing was wrong. Three days later, I went back to dispute the claim with a little more evidence (ie, my arm - incredibly swollen and bruised). Turned out my arm was broken in three places.

Another time, I went in about 5:00 in the morning with my face smashed up. Two teeth were way out of place, half of my bottom lip was missing, amonst other things. They told me the doc would be in about 9AM and in the meantime, here was a Tylenol for my pain.

Then there was the time I went in with a weird infection. They kept me for days trying different drugs. Finally they cut it out and left a few gaping wounds in my leg which took 6 months to heal. They never did tell me what it was.

Fucking good for nothing emergency rooms.

14

Yes, it’s bad. Let’s now get into my ass operation.

TMI WARNING.

I noticed something was wrong the Monday of that week. By Wednesday, it was almost unbearable, so I called in sick and went to the ER. Every single fucking person there insisted on sticking their fingers or shoving devices up my ass. They found nothing, told me to use a Sitz bath and epsom salts, and that would go away. Oh, and here’s a prescription for Percocet. Gee, thanks.

Suffice to say I couldn’t sit for the next few days, and had to take more time off work. Finally, I did some feeling, and noticed a huge lump right above my ass, at the base of my spinal cord. The pain was now unbearable. So I went back to the same ER (and the same stupid resident, who on the Wednesday said it was because of drinking, saw me writhing in pain with an actual problem - bitch), and lo and behold, it was a huge abscess. (I did not get it from being fucked because I don’t get fucked, OK, TheRyan?)

They made me drink one and a half litres of some kind of radioactive water, in order for me to have a CAT scan. Meanwhile, I’m needing to pee badly, but I can’t, because the infection had put pressure on my prostate, making evacuation almost impossible.

So the CAT scan comes back, and the infection had ruptured inside of me, and was moving up my spinal cord. Operation STAT. They operated on my ass and left me with this incredibly painful packing of the wound.

I later discovered that they had needed to make a small incision in my sphincter in order to shove their cameras and what-not up my ass. This caused a certain degree of incontinence, complicated by the heavy antibiotics given to me during the operation, which killed all the lovely flora in my GI tract, causing diarrhea. So it would just fucking drip out. I had to wear bloody Depends pads for two months, at least. And my ass still hurt like hell, especially when I needed the wound re-packed twice a day for a month.

The only highlights were getting to try Dilaudid, Demerol, and morphine for the first time. Oh, and general anaesthetic. That’s fun stuff.

Point of all this is, had they known what they were fucking doing the first time they examined my ass it wouldn’t have come to that. They would have been able to drain it and send me home.

BTW this is the same ER I went to yesterday.

Ugh. At least the surgeon was hot. :wink:

  • s.e.
15

You know, this was the one complaint that I had when I went to the ER last (for a broken ankle). The wait was really long – about 5 or 6 hours – and they kept promising to med me, then not come back for an hour (whereupon they would say “Oh, I’ll go get someone” and disappear again).

It was a Saturday night and they were busy taking chest x-rays and such for a heart patient, so I guess I can understand, but it hurt and I really would have liked some drugs!

16

Wow. That’s a horrendous ass story. And the mental imagery that goes along with it, well…

17

Damn scott evil you have had some bad luck with the health care system-- it was Canadian both times I assume. I have had cracked ribs a couple of times (from Mountain Biking) and it is no fun.

Semi-helpful hints- Avoid the comedies for a while, it’s a cliche true, but laughing really does hurt. Also, whatever you do DO NOT SNEEZE. Oh god does that suck.

Get well soon,

-me

18

Had you been there, you would have puked. I don’t know how my parents were able to take it. Then again, they did change my diapers…

Still, strangely, that moment when I was briefly naked and they were there, I felt weird. They might have seen me nekkid as a boy, but now… ugh. Weird hang-up. A trillion guys (and some women) have seen me naked, be it in bed, at the nude beach, or in the showers, but my family? ::shudder:: :eek: Maybe a topic for IMHO.

  • s.e.