Before you read further be warned there is some really nasty medical info enclosed. I mean it is gross but it is nessacary for the rant.
So I woke up on Monday(8-14) and found that a fistula I had removed a year ago was reforming. I immediately called my doc to make an appointment to have it fixed because my last one was extremely painful. I quickest I coud get an appointment was for Thursday. I figured that if I took it really easy and laid down all the time it wouldn’t get too bad by the time I got to the appointment. The last time it took about a week to get an appointment.
Well, I was wrong. By Tuesday morning it had abcessed and swelled to about the size of half a golf ball. I couldn’t sitdown, I could barely walk. In fact about all I could do was curl up in a fetal position and whimper. I called my Dad to take my to the ER because I couldn’t stand the pain. Here is where the decent into hell begins.
I show up at the local Universities ER and signed in at about 11 AM. I fill out the forms and the do the standard blood pressure-heart rate-temprature thing. I then had to explain to a nurse what the problem was. I did and when she asked me what the pain was like on a scale of 1 to 10 I replied that it was about a 9.8. She told me to go to the waiting room and would get someone for me as soon as possible.
After trying to find the least painful way to sit or stand for about 20 minutes I finally went to a fairly hidden corner in the waiting room and laid down. About 15 minutes later a security gaurd came over and told me that I couldn’t lie down. I explained to him that I was in the ER because I couldn’t sitdown or stand without extreme pain. He didn’t give a shit. I then pointed out that there was no one else within view and that I wasn’t bugging anybody. He still didn’t give a shit. I then went up to the nurse who took my information and asked her if there was somewhere I could go. She said no and didn’t seem to give a shit either. So I told my Dad to wait for them to call for me and went outside and laid down in the grass strip in front of the building and waited. And waited and waited some more. Four hours later they finally called my name. Note, during that time I counted 8 people who came in after me get called before me.
So, after four hours they took me to a curtain area with a bed, gave me a gown and told me the doctor would be right with me. So I put on the gown and curled up on the bed whimpering and waiting for the doctor to show up. It turns out that ‘the doctor will be right in’ actually means ‘the doctor will be in in about 2 hours’.
The doctor, who said he was a resident, takes a look and probes a bit which cause me basically to scream. The doctor then tells me that he is going to have a nurse take some blood, give me some pain medication, start an anti-biotic IV and get a surgical consult. The nurse shows up 15 minutes later and takes the blood and starts the IV, says “I’ll be right back” and disappears. The nurse showed up about an hour later, checks the IV and wondered aloud why the doctor didn’t give me any pain medication. I told her that he said he was going to. She look on the chart, doesn’t see anything about pain medication and tells me she will go get him so I can get some relief. Well, the wonderful doc shows up about a half hour later, looks at the chart and then says “Oh, yeah, sorry I forgot the pain medication. I’ll have the nurse get you some right away”.
What the FUCK? You forgot it? How in the fuck could it slip your mind when you had the fucking chart in your hand while examining me? You FUCKING BASTARD. But wait it gets better.
The nurse comes by and shoots some pain medication into the IV which helps some. The surgeon doing the consult, I’ll call her surgeon #1, finally shows up about an hour later. She takes a look, tells me that I need to go to the OR. She then says something about talking to her attending to get me a bed after the operation.
A little while later surgeon #1 shows up with her attending, surgeon #2. Surgeon #2 takes a look, start probing a bit and then starts squeezing and tapping the abcess which has me screaming. She then tells surgeon #1 that they will do the procedure in the curtain area. She then tells a nurse to give me ‘10 of morphine’ and that they would be back in 20 minutes. The nurse disappears and doesn’t come back.
20 minutes later the surgeons come back and start setting up the equipment. Surgeon #2 asks me if the nurse, who was supposed to give me the serious pain medication, has come back. No,I tell her, the nurse hasn’t come back or given me anything. Anyway, they fiddle around for about 5 more minutes and then Surgeon #2 tells me that they are gong to start. I told her that I neeeded something for the pain, the morphine, a local, anything before they start. She replies, “Well, a local would only be a second needle” and jams the needle in and starts sucking out some of the puss and blood. I had to bite on the pillow to keep from screaming my head off. She then makes some cuts and starts jamming something in the cut to clear out the abcess. It felt like she was jamming a rusty railroad spike wrapped in barbed wire into my scrotum. About this time the nurse shows up with the morphine I was supposed to get before they started. The nurse had a “Oh Fuck” look on her face and says “Here’s the 10 of morphine he was supposed to get”. Surgeon #2 thinks about it for a second then says “He didn’t get 10 already?”. The nurse said no. Surgeon #2 then says “Well, ok, give him 5 now”. I scream for about 5 more minutes and they finally give me enough to stop me from screaming.
Dear surgeon #2, how in the fuck could you start a procedure without checking that the proper medication had been given? You are an attending and you don’t read charts? I told you, you incompetent bitch, the nurse hadn’t given me the medication. Did you think I was yelling and writhing in pain just for the hell of it? May you rot in hell you moronic slut.
Slee