LOL!
HOLY SHIT! If I acted that way at work (a hospital), my supervisor would tell me to go home and not come back to work until I got counseling. She probably did have a rough night. But if a nurse is feeling that bad and that out of sorts and cannot cope with shit that happened at work, she needs to leave and get HELP!
Anyone else wondering what location that would be?
Holy shit! You can diagnose over the internet?!? That’s just fucking AMAZING!!!
How do you KNOW he has a cold? Or any sort of viral illness? How do you it wasn’t bacterial or some other weird shit going on? How do you know there really is nothing they can do for ear pain?
If the real docs on this message board hesistate (nay - refuse) to diagnose over the internet perhaps you should take that as a hint to do likewise. Sure, suggest, advise, console… but not one of us can really know what’s happening with a fellow Doper in real life.
Pain because your eardrums are about to rupture? Yes.
Pain is not necessarially an emergency, but it can be a strong indication that you are having one. At 2 am you don’t have many alternatives besides the ER, and while waiting in a corner isn’t any fun, at least if you do take a sudden turn for the worst or body parts start dropping off or spurting goo you’re in the right place for immediate attention. The average person is not a position to make precise medical judgements about many things and yes, if they’re in such pain they’re vomiting, or their losing one of their senses, yes, they SHOULD be evaluated.
If Ludovic said he had lost 50% of his vision would anyone here criticize his decision to go to the ER?
I went from a minor scratch to emergency surgery to drain a lump on the side of my face the size of a tennis ball in less than 24 hours. Yes, you CAN develop a severe infection that can cause horrific problems in a matter of hours. There are instances of folks going from a minor scratch to death in less than 2 days. It’s rare, but it does happen.
If a person is in severe pain with a condition they’ve never experienced before, and they’re losing a bodily function (and I would include hearing or vision in that) it is entirely reasonable for them to go see a doctor.
Pardon me, but I certainly didn’t diagnose the OP and that wasn’t my intent. The fact remains that in all of my ER experiences, they would look at you with an earache, tell you that you indeed had a cold, give you some antibiotics, and send you home after a minimum wait of 5 hours or so.
No pain meds, no ear drops. THese sorts of things are best left for the OPs PCP, since the PCP has a vested interest in whether the OP lives or dies or still has his hearing intact. The ER doc(once again, in my experience), only has a vested interest in making sure people get in and out of his hospital at the fastest and least expensive rate humanly possible.
Sam
Jesus. Where to start?
- Yes, pain can be an indication of an emergency. I don’t have a cite, but I’d say in about 90% of cases, it’s a sign that…you’re having pain! Something’s not right, but you’re not going to fall over dead.
- The average person can’t make precise medical judgements? Right, we should leave that to the professionals and pay them money to tell us what’s going on with our bodies. Because god forbid, someone is in tune with their own body and doesn’t need to bog down an already piss-poor-quality medical system (in the US, can’t speak for anywhere else) with an ear infection. Has our society really sunk that low?
- Whenever I get a bad cold or a sinus infection, I lose a lot of my hearing, too. I don’t, however, freak out and go running off to the nearest ER. However, I apparently should, since I can’t make medical judgements on my own.
Well, yeah. Here in Santa Fe, the bubonic plague is rare, but it does happen. Does that mean that if I get a fever and a sore throat and my glands are swollen, I should race off to the ER and have them quarentine me? No, it means I should drink some OJ and get some rest, because I’ve probably got a cold or strep throat.
What the hell is this, with “pain and a condition you’ve never experienced”? I’d never had a migraine until last spring, and my introduction wasn’t pretty: I couldn’t stand up without my vision tunnelling and vomiting for about six hours. I didn’t scream and freak out and call 911; I took tylenol and waited a couple hours to see if it would resolve itself. It’s people like you who are a huge part of the reason why so many ERs are so hugely overcrowded and understaffed.
Last year, I had a terrible kidney infection, and was posting on the SDMB - I didn’t WANT to go to the ER, but after being told repeatedly by a few people here to go, I did. Turns out the kidney infection was getting better, but I also had a virus on top of the kidney infection and needed IV fluids for dehydration. Had I not gone and just waited it out, there’s a good chance I might have become dehydrated and listless to the point of not being able to get myself to the ER when needed - my parents were out of town at the time, and I was home by myself.
Had ludovic posted here about his ear pain, I’d probably have told him to go. Why? Because my mom lost the hearing in her left ear after an ear infection caused by a piece of rice thrown at a wedding - she had no idea it was in there - and now she’s deaf in her left ear. If she’d gone when she first started feeling pain, she might still have her hearing today.
I know ERs are busy and understaffed, and I’ve only visited with a broken bone or a concussion or the kidney infection above, but honestly, I’d prefer it to be safe rather than sorry. Yes, we do need to limit the amount of parents who take their kids for colds (I’ve worked for a medical billing company for ten months, I’ve seen it - kids are running NO fever, not in pain, just a runny nose - this happens more than you’d think), and for various non-threatening illnesses, but there are some situations where it’s just not wise to wait for what could be a very real possibility of becoming extremely ill.
E.
I’d pin a good bit of the blame for overcrowding on people using the ER as their sole/primary medical care, myself. In the ER, they have to treat/stabilize you before even asking about insurance, so plenty of people will ignore problems until they get to ER level (or just nearly that level), and then they have to be taken care of. At my last job in pediatric cardiology, we’d see parents who would miss their kid’s checkups, then we’d get a call from the ER for a consult on this kid who hadn’t been in to see our doctors for quite a while.
By the way, plenty of sufferers of severe migraines do end up in the ER. Not me personally, though (yet).
There’s also a difference between those people who suffer a single episode of some kind of problem and choose to go to the ER, versus those who do this on a regular basis. At the same previous job I talked about earlier, we had one parent who we nearly suspected of Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy. He called for so many needless transports of his child to the hospital for nothing apparently wrong with the kid that a number of private ambulance companies in his area refused to pick up from that address any longer.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen this much sanctimony crammed into one post since, well, you bitched about the way other people celebrate Christmas.
Well bully for you ninja: I personally, don’t have nanobots coursing through my system telling me if something is life threatening or not. If you want to talk min-maxing the costs in a health system why don’t you show me some numbers? On second thought, don’t, I’ll do it for you: I’m not going to reply to you again in this thread.
How much is loss of hearing worth? At least $50,000, but personally, it’s worth a lot more to me: if I were faced with the decision to go permanently deaf or spend that money (which I could get access to if I really needed to,) I’d spend it. Now estimate that an ER visit is $1000 being paid by myself, insurance, the hospital, or the state: an overestimate but I’ll run with a round number.
Now do you know enough about your body and medicine that if you were in that situation you’d know if you had more than a %2 chance of permanent hearing loss? Could you really? Not to mention the chance of death (after all surfing the net reveals several deadly diseases I was only one or two symptoms away from.) which to me, is theoretically worth at least $10,000,000 if not more. Not to mention the pain.
Well you say, in any case, I’m the kind of person who clogs the ER system. No, not really. If there were enough people like me, the hospital would, if they were smart, open a 24-hour urgent care facility, and I looked for one in the area but couldn’t find one. It was just my bad luck that things took a turn for the worse around 10:00 the night before, when all the area ones had closed.
Thanks for the support everyone: it’s getting slightly better but more importantly, it’s not getting worse. Although I did spent the night waking up thinking I was in the world of my NaNoWriMo entry! :eek: due to lack of sleep and maybe a temperature which is gone now.
My god. You’re not the one with the zombies, are you?
No, that was Ino.
Here’s hoping your NaNo had some of Draelin’s sex scenes. 
We’re in the Pit, right? Profanity is the customary starting point 
Look, MOST people don’t want to go to the ER… in MOST cases, if someone has an ear ache so bad they say they WANT to go to the ER then I’d probably take them. The old better safe than sorry thing. If it’s not an emergency you what, sit in a chair for 6 hours? Bummer, but no one dies, right? If it IS an emergency you’ll be damn glad you came.
Oh, please - I work with MD’s Monday through Friday, I have a much better knowledge of medicine than any ten randomly picked laymen, but I know damn well I am NOT a doctor and my guesses should be very limited.
I have had friends who have lost all or part of the hearing in an ear due to infections. I have a friend who built up so much puss behind his eardrum that it essentially blew out and *sprayed * the person standing next to him with blood and rot. He would up having surgery and no, his hearing on that side is no longer normal. Permanent hearing damage is just that - permanent - and it will affect you for the rest of your life. Every day, 24/7/365.
You are correct that ear infections do not normally cause such damage, but then, most people with normal ear infections, while in pain, are not in extreme pain nor are they in the sort of pain that ibuprofen or Tylenol can’t handle. If there is high fever, vomiting, *intolerable *pain unrelieved by OTC meds, and/or, god forbid, shit leaking out of your ear SEE A DOCTOR IMMEDIATELY!!! You have a serious problem.
Yes, we all know what that slight muffling is like - including, presumably, Ludovic. Apparently, this episode was worse than normal. Someone saying “I’m in incredible pain” is NOT freaking out - it’s a statement of fact. Just because YOU can’t see a “credible” reason for such pain does not make it magically go away.
At a certain point the person is saying “this is UNUSUAL pain” for the apparent condition. At which point a deeper look is warranted.
Let’s see… you can’t stand up, you’re throwing up for six hours, and your vision is affected, you’ve never had anything like this before, and all you do it take Tylenol and tough it out? Good God, woman, what does it take for you to go to the doc, something falling entirely off your body?
Frankly, I think your course of action under the circumstances you describe was just plain dumb. Now, if you had had migraines before and were familar with these symptoms being connected with that condition that would be one thing, but you just assumed it was a migraine, you didn’t KNOW that. You were probably correct - but if you hadn’t been the consequences might have been dire.
It is, of course, your life to do with as you will - but under the circumstances you describe anyone would be justified in seeking emergency attention.
Oh, please, the last two times I was in the ER for my own needs I was seen immediately because it WAS an emergency. In fact, the last time I didn’t even finish describing the problemb before I was bodily lifted and dumped on a gurney. If anything I wait longer than I should to go in.
Ear infections are the definition of pain. When I get one, I often end up lying in bed writhing and crying. The last two times I had them, it was roughly 20 minutes from feeling the first twinges to wanting to scream. Trust me, if I didn’t know exactly what was happening and what to do, I’d be running to the ER.
I just thought it would be appropriate to quote these passages from an actual doctor.
I’ve only had a few episodes of earaches, when I was a kid. They were pretty bad. My dad was quite adamant about seeking treatment for earaches, because his sister (my aunt) had an ear infection when she was a kid—she didn’t tell anyone, it got so bad that pus started coming out of her ear. She’s got hearing loss because of it. So earaches are taken seriously in our family.
If I was experiencing screamingly-awful pain and I couldn’t get it under control, yes, I would go to an ER. I never knew, until I read this thread, that it was somehow inappropriate to do that. And frankly, after reading this thread, I remain unconvinced that it is inappropriate to do that. The above post from the good doctor seems to reinforce my feelings.
I have extensive, permanent hearing loss in my right ear because I did NOT go to the emergency room when I had extreme pain in my ear. By the time blood and pus were dripping from my ear, it was too late. Now, at 42, all it takes is a slight cold, the infection migrates to my ears, and I’m almost completely deaf for the duration of the cold.
I hope you feel better soon.
And I think NinjaChick is experiencing PMS or is just a sanctimonious bitch. :rolleyes:
Had that been a stroke or something equally scary, and you’d died, you would absolutely qualify for a Darwin award. And I say this as someone who has migraines. My very first one, my mom took me to urgent care, as it was the middle of the day, and something other than the ER was open. Hell yeah, we’d have gone to the ER at midnight.
I can go from a relatively normal [for me with a chronic back injury] amount of pain to feeling like someone just made a home run on that portion of my back over a kidney in 6 hours, and then after 6 more hours of projectile vomiting to an emergency room looking like I am in full heroin withdrawl. I have asymptomatic bladder and kidney infections until that point at which the infection is so bad I get hospitalizes. Granted, most people get symptoms when they get a bladder infection, and it gets worse when it moves into a kidney…but I don’t. Short of random piss tests, I have to wait until Babe Ruth lines up on my back [provided I havent done something stupid that would make my back decide to spaz out] to know something is wrong=\
I also have a very high pain tolerance [ gee, isnt it wonderful what chronic pain can teach you?] and what I consider an earache would probably have most people screaming. I do know I have not bothered to have a local for stitching random surface injuries for years as it costs money and if I know something is going to hurt, I can deal with it [of course I am a wuss when it comes to fillings, but that is a horse of a different color, everybody has a weakness and mine is dentists=(]
I find it perfectly possible - especially with some of the nasty antibitoic resistant bugs out there- that someone could go from seemingly OK to rampant nastiness in 6 hours. Anybody remember flesh eating strep? fine to terminal in 24-36 hours…
Actually, yes to the first one (and I try to make a habit of not being the second one). Also, I’m going through both some major financial shit right now (involving owing people money they’d lent me so that I could, yes, go to a doctor) and way, way too much medical shit myself. Every other thing that anyone who’s “in the know” about it says to me is “go see another doctor”, which they know I can’t afford and, also, pisses me off. It’s my health, it’s my body, I’ll damn well do what I please. Add that to my other…underlying psychosis, for lack of a better term, about doctors, and I’m damn touch on the topic. Yes, I was a sanctimonious bitch. I apologize.
And Ludovic, I do sincerely hope you’re feeling better. Any type of sickness and or pain sucks royal amounts of ass.