Got The Flu? Okay. Come On In And Let Us Treat You!

The BBQ Pit
21

Man!

Unless you’ve got some sort of immune condition, are a very small child, or a very elderly person, the flu is a completely idiot reason to go to the hospital.

It’s a virus. They can’t do shit for you!

I’ve also, btw, had the “No, leave me alone” arguement with EMTs (twice, actually).

Aren’t hospitals for, like, medical emergencies and the like? Feeling crappy is NOT a serious medical condition. It’s the flu, you’ll be fine in a couple days. Drink some gatorade, take some DayQuil, and get the fuck over it!

I have just some random sore spot with people who bitch endlessly about getting sick. Pisses me off to no end.

22

Actually, it IS possible for an otherwise healthy young person to become so dehydrated while suffering the flu as to require a trip to the hospital. Which is why the Authorities are so adamant about pushing the fluids on the sick.

No, they can’t cure the virus - but they can give you IV fluids to rehydrate you, bring down an outrageously high fever (which can also happen in otherwise healthy, young adults) or treat complications like pneumonia (which, I believe, killed at least a few of this year’s flu fatalities).

It’s a good bet, though, that any “otherwise healthy, young adult” suffering form the above serious problems assocaited with the flu would not be able to remain upright long under their own power, or drive themselves to medical treatment.

In other words, NinjaChick, the flu can be a medical emergency, even in a person with no other risk factors. It’s rare, but it does occur.

There is also the brutal fact that many in our country (40 million +) do not have medical insurance and also likely do not have a regular doctor. The ER becomes their de facto source of medical care, right or wrong. Of course, such folks should be ER walk-in’s, not ambulance riders.

As a rule of thumb - if you can avoid the ambulance ride and get to the hospital otherwise, do that. Ambulances should be a last resort.

23

My father is elderly, but he doesn’t seem to realize it.

Last year, I got this phone call from him.

Me: “Hello?”

Dad: “Hi, Cheri, how are you?”

Me: “Fine, what’s up?”

Dad: “Well, I just thought I should tell you I’m at the hospital.”

Me: “What’s wrong?”

Dad: “I cut my thumb.”

Me: “Why didn’t you call me?”

Dad: “I did, your line was busy.”

Me: “Oh, okay. Sorry. I’ll be right there.”

Dad: “No, no…don’t come up. I’ll call you when I’m done and you can come get me.”

Me: “Don’t be silly…I’ll be right there.”

Dad: “Well, okay, I guess.”

So I grabbed my keys and zipped up to ER and in due course I was ushered into Dad’s cubicle. He was lying on the bed with his hand in a bowl of water. I asked him to let me see his hand.

He pulled his hand out of the water and…for a second I thought I was going to faint. He had been working in his shop, and while pushing a board through his saw he shoved his THUMB into the saw. We are talking major damage here.

Me: “Oh, dad…”

Dad: (crankily) “Well, that’s why I didn’t want you to come.”

So I sat down and we were quiet for awhile. Then I said…“Dad, how’d you get here?” And he said…(surprised) “I drove, of COURSE!”

Me: “WHY DIDN’T YOU CALL 911!!!”

Dad: (puzzled) “What for?”

So here is the whole story. Dad shoved the end of his thumb into the saw. He went in the house, called me. My line was busy. He decided he needed to go to the hospital, but he was in his shop clothes. So he CHANGED HIS CLOTHES! “Well, I couldn’t go to the hospital in my shop clothes…”** And drove himself to the hospital**!

They had to cut off the end of his thumb, just above the joint. Which was a good thing, because the joint is actually what makes the opposable thumb thing work. He still has most of the use of that thumb, it’s annoying but mostly for buttoning shirts.

Anyway, it was going to be awhile before they could see him…VERY busy night in the ER…so dad said (apologetic) “Honey, maybe you could go home and clean up the house a little bit. I think I might have bled a little on the kitchen floor. Maybe the bathroom too.”

So I went to his house. BLED A LITTLE? There was blood all over the place. A massive trail of it into the house, through the kitchen and ALL over the BR floor. Well, he had to **CHANGE HIS CLOTHES, ** now, didn’t he?

So, there you have THAT. He’s a tough old bird and he comes from a long line of tough old birds.

And ambulances are for wimps. :slight_smile:

Oh, and I should add…

After the Doctor got done I took dad home and told him I would make him some dinner (he hadn’t eaten since lunch and by this time it was 9:30PM) but first I wanted to call my sister to let her know what was going on. I went into the bedroom to call her so he couldn’t hear me while I told her. I was on the phone maybe 10 minutes. When I came out, dad was sitting at the kitchen table eating a sandwich. Which he had made himself, of course. I said “WHY DIDN’T YOU WAIT FOR ME TO MAKE YOU SOMETHING TO EAT!!!” (I admit, I was getting a little bit hysterical at this point) And he said (puzzled) “Why?”

Apparently, daughters are for wimps, too. :smiley:

When we “discussed” this later, we agreed that from now on if he needed to go to the hospital he would either wait until he could get ahold of me (if it wasn’t urgent) OR he would call 911. This decision, however, wasn’t arrived at easily. And even after he agreed, his parting shot was “I don’t know what you are so het up about…you would’ve done the exact same thing.” And you know what? He’s right!

24

Heh. Abusers of the system. It can be very frustrating.

I’m a member of a volunteer county dispatched rescue/medical squad. We have two elderly women in a neighboring community in which we offer service. Both of them are frequent flyers, and usually when one of them calls 911, the other apparently feels left out and lonesome so she’ll call 911 within hours. One of them I’ll call “B”. We’ve been to her home 5 times in the last 10 days. Why? Because her stomach hurts. Because her leg hurts. Because she can’t move her arm. Her stomach still hurts. Prescriptions? Many and varied, most of them attached to the fridge with a magnet, unfilled 15 days after issue. B has a husband and a son. We have been to their home several times in the last three years for them, too. One time when the son skinned his knee. A week ago. He’s 45. Another time for the husband. He had a nosebleed. It was stopped by the time we got there, but he still wanted to go in the ambulance.

The other gal, let’s call her “S”. S lives with her son, and they are collectors. Of everything, apparently. Clothes, shoes, books, furniture, plastic figurines and plastic little girl barrettes (which they use to attach dirty socks to their electric fans). You name it they got it. And it’s all over the house. Pathways barely wide enough to walk and on either side it’s stacked to the ceiling. S runs about 200 lbs, has unmanaged diabetes and she has a lot of “falls”. I think. I dunno. She’ll call 911 after she “falls” in the farthest most packed in corner of her home. No matter what the situation, she “falls” flat on her back with her arms folded across her chest. Now you would think that a large person “falling” in a very small amount of floor space would take a few of the things on that plastic shelving unit next to her down with her. If not the entire shelving unit itself. Right? Right? Maybe just the plastic flowers inserted into empty pop cans? Or the three tier cookie rack filled with happy meal toys and what looks like petrified dog poop, all spray painted metallic gold? Never happens. Never. We sure knock alot of things over while hauling her 200 lb. dead weight out of there on a back board.

Lately, the trend has been for these two to call when it’s either a) bitter cold, b) snowing like hell or c) a holiday. Since we were there yesterday and today is sunny and warm, it looks like we won’t be paged out until tomorrow evening. There’s freezing rain in the forecast.

25

Scotticher, if this had happened 30 years ago instead of last year, I’d swear you were my aunt. Actually, in retrospect, I think my grandfather may have had your dad beaten.

He started having chest pains one afternoon at work, and rather than take off to go to the hospital, he finished his shift. Then he drove 20 miles home to shower and change his clothes (he worked in a mill and was all sweaty and filthy), then drove himself 20 miles back into town to the ER. Of course, he was having a big ol’ heart attack. Better to die than to go to the doctor dirty and smelly, I suppose. And my parents wonder where I get my stubborn streak from.

26

Well, dear, we are most likely related somewhere down the line. Dad didn’t come up with this stuff on his own, you know? It takes a long time to breed this kind of thing into the genetic code.

But as I said, I find it hard to fault him. He was right, I’d have done the same thing, for shame on me. I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?

27

Let me tell you about the guy who called 911 and wanted an ambulance to take him to the hospital because he had seven mosquito bites. He was worried about West Nile virus.

Well, okay, that’s pretty much the whole story. There was also the lady who called wanting an ambulance for her mother’s severe lice infestation; when asked if there was any way she might be able to take her, she said huffily, “I don’t want that shit in my car!”

On the other hand, we’ve also had people insist they were perfectly fine (usually at car accidents), only to collapse later. Generally speaking, if you’ve just rolled your car 6 times and bounced it off a tree, get in the damn ambulance.

28

This reminds me of the father of the girl I dated through high school. This guy wouldn’t see a doctor unless he had a leg chopped off and needed more blood. Even then, who knows.

Case in point, I’m 17 when we go to her grandma’s house to put up a new bird house. Psycho-dad is on a ladder with a sledgehammer to pound in the post. On the 3rd swing he hits an overhead telephone wire. This ricochets the hammer back to his HEAD! After falling off the ladder and seperating his shoulder, he went back in the house, got grandma’s sewing kit and stiched himself. Oh, did I mention that was after resetting his shoulder joint? (Think Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon after escaping the straight-jacket).

He also didn’t like dentists. What takes the cake is 3 times (I personnaly saw one of them) he took a pair of pliers into the bathroom to extract his own damn tooth!

Wonder how he’s doing now.

29

That was way off topic, but felt it somehow deserved a home here.

30

I stand corrected on the seriousness of the flu, I suppose. Still not getting a flu shot ever, though.

To continue a semi-hijack: My grandmother, who is a month shy of 90 years of age, has been in the hospital for nearly a week now. She has a whole slew of chronic medical problems, and has had a heart attack in the past. She told my aunt one evening that she was having a little chest pain and her left arm hurt, so to the ER they went.

They wanted to give her aspirin (not sure why, but they did). Gramma: “No, it’ll upset my stomach.”

The doc offers to give her some Maalox with it.

Gramma: “How about I take the Maalox and you keep the asprin?”

I’m remembering that for next time I get yelled at for not going to the doctor. I come by my medical stubbornness honestly.

31

I’d probably have to be in the kind of shape that would require an ambulance before I’d go to the ER for the flu. I doubt I’d go to my regular doctor, either. Being that sick is bad enough - why compound your misery by sitting in a waiting room, infecting other people, when you could be at home in bed?

32

I’m not a Dr., and I’m sure one will correct me if I’m wrong.

I thought I heard, or read that aspirin for some reason is a good thing to give someone if they’re having a heart attack.

Come to think of it, I think it was on a Bayer Aspirin commercial. Can someone with medical training let us know if this is right?

33

My mother (a physical therapist) was reading that, and informed me that, if taken right away, an asprin can help dissolve a clot and make the damage from a heart attack not as bad. I’m sure one of the doctors on the board will be along soon to explain that better, though.

34

Yes, aspirin is both a pain releiver and anticoagulant. Cuminin(?) (help me out medical Dopers) was given to my dad for his heart. Going off topic, but he had cancer, which I learned rarely kills you, it’s usually a heart attack that does you in because of weakened health and chemo, etc. The drug was to keep his blood from clogging up before being hit by a bus. Hey, he was dead on diagnosis, I’ve accepted that.

Anyway, the aspirin won’t dissolve the clot, it’s meant to thin the blood during an attack, keeping blood flowing to the heart till the paramedics get to your not-quite-dead body.

Cumadin!(sp?) That’s the drug.

Permit me one more aside? Can any M.D.s tell me why he was on that AND he was to take an 81mg St. John’s aspirin? There were many nosebleeds. Sorry for the hijack.

35

Cuminin. I don’t care who you are, that’s funny. Guess it’s my Emeril wannabe coming through.

36

Coumadin is also known as Warfarin.
www.coumadin.com

37

To continue the aspirin hijack, when I was taking graduate nursing pharmacology, our lecturer, who is the head pharmacist at Johns Hopkins, told us that if you suspect someone is having a heart attack, you should have them chew (I know, ew) and swallow one regular adult aspirin. In his words, this is “life saving”.

38

Whoops, that was me, not Bluesman.

39

Coumadin, aka Warfarin, aka Rat Poison. “That which does not kill us in large amounts keeps us from having heart attacks in small, measured amounts.” To paraphrase. :smiley:

40

Years ago, I drove myself to the emergency room with a collapsed lung. They took an x-ray, then slapped me into an ambulance and rushed me to a better-equipped surgical facility for several hours of life-saving surgery I had no idea I needed. In my defense, it was like the fifth time my lung had collapsed and there was so much scar tissue it didn’t hurt any more, so I didn’t know how bad it was. It felt funny, is all, so I knew I should have it checked out.