True. I went from “perfectly healthy” to “needs emergency surgery for abscess” in something like 12 hours once. Certainly less than 24.
On the other hand, in that case I DID go to my primary doc. He took one look at me and started passing me along the system that wound up with me seeing a surgeon in very short order.
Come to think of it, the other time I needed emergency care as an adult I went to a primary doc first and he was the one who sent me to the ER.
Hmmm…well, at least I sought medical care when I needed it. Not like the guy I once ran into on a job site with a suppurating third degree burn. “Do you think I should see a doctor about this?” he asked me. Uh, yeah, dude, I think you should have seen a doctor something like four days ago when you got that burn. I think they might have wound up admitting him if he had gone in when he got it, but in that case he might have spent fewer weeks in the hospital on IV antibiotics.
I’ve been to the ER three times since I hit adulthood. The first visit, I probably should’ve gone 8 hours earlier than I did, when adrenaline still had the pain of a broken hip under control. My BF at the time came to take me to the ER, but I almost passed out when I tried to use the crutches. He called 911, the paramedics came, and instead of loading me into the ambulance they loaded me in to the car so that my bf could drive me. If it hadn’t been for him, I would’ve had to take the ambulance since no taxi driver would’ve allowed the paramedics to load a patient into his a cab. The 2nd time, was due to accidental overdose of an inhaler. Again, a friend drove me, but since I was able to move on my own, if there had been no friend handy, I would’ve cabbed it. The most recent time, I drove myself since the massively infected cat bite on my face only impared my looks, not my brain or my body.
My personal criteria for calling an ambulance is “could something happen between this moment and the ER that an EMT could assist/prevent?” If the answer is yes, then dial 911. If the answer is maybe, then dial 911. If no, find alternate transportation.
In an ideal world the patient with the mass that had been growing on his/her neck should have seen an ENT years ago. But once you have the realization that it’s affecting your ability to breathe an immediate trip to the ER is a good idea. When it turns out that in addition to their intermittent stridor for the last few days they’ve been losing weight because they can barely swallow for the last few weeks and they have episodes of bleeding from the part of the tumor that eroded into their mouth (not really sure how long that’s been going on) it’s clear they actually should have come to the ER weeks ago. Maybe months ago. Any of the above could cause respiratory failure without further warning.
What if your eleven month old baby sneaks into the kitchen while you’re talking to your husband, pulls open the top from the coffee pot and stuffs some of yesterday’s coffee grounds in her mouth? What if you laugh so hard at the result that you can barely breathe for twenty minutes? What if you’re still laughing at this image ten hours later? What then?
I’d also say that serious asthma attacks are valid reasons for going to the ER. I’ve had to this twice as a child and once as an adult. I doubt any ER physician would look down upon anyone who can’t breathe and who has to crawl to the door to let the paramedics in.
Of course! Asthma that isn’t relieved by however you usually relieve it (inhaler, tea, meditation, etc.) is worth taking to an ER!
It’s the ABC’s - Airway, Breathing and Circulation. If your airway is blocked, or you have reason to think it’s going to become blocked (asthma, choking, allergic reaction, etc.): go to the ER. If you cannot breathe, or you have reason to believe you soon won’t be able to breathe (all of the above, drowning, suffocation, inhaling a bunch of stuff that’s making you wheeze, etc.): go to the ER. If something is impairing your circulation or you have reason to believe something is about to impair your circulation (if all your blood is falling out due to a cut or hole, if you’re vomitting or pooping blood, if something is pinched off, if a body part has fallen off, your heart may not be beating right, etc.): go to the ER.
(And I’d add “blood sugar is wonky and won’t respond to whatever you normally do to control your blood sugar.” It doesn’t fit the “ABC” mnemonic, but it’s important to seek emergency treatment for low or high blood sugar that won’t budge.)
But remember too that an ER provides stabilizing treatment and then a referral to non-emergent care as appropriate. We just had a thread where people learned that a non-lifethreatening bullet is probably not going to be removed in the ER. A broken bone will probably not be casted in an ER. A suspected heart attack that turns out to probably not be a heart attack will get you a referral to a cardiologist to see in the morning for follow up. An unusually heavy menstrual period that isn’t an actual lifethreatening hemorrhage will get you a referral to an OB/GYN for follow up. A slipped disc may get you a prescription for a dozen pain pills, but after that you’ll be given a referral to a pain specialist or ortho or whomever.
They’ll do everything they can to make sure you keep breathing through this asthma attack, but then they’ll expect you to follow up with a pulmonologist to look at your asthma treatment and see what changes need to be made on an ongoing basis.
The ER’s job is not to treat anything that comes through the door all the way to “all better”, but to make sure you’ll probably live long enough to make it to office hours to be treated by the appropriate physician.
Ever since those ads, I’ve had this idea that there should be an Erections Hall of Fame, maybe on some isolated Pacific island, and the qualification for admission is that you still have your erection when you get there.
Also, I was pleasantly surprised that my perhaps ill-considered search for “dangerous erections” actually returned pages on medically dangerous erections and not, as I feared once I pressed “search,” pages for sexily dangerous erections and the hijinks entailed therewith.
love
yams!!
ETA: or is this some sort of whoosh or inside joke? I’m always afraid I’m missing something.
I had a pain on my hand last week that was getting worse for an hour. Fearing a staph infection on my skin I went in to the local ER at 1:30 am to make sure and get antibiotics if I was correct. At a cost of $150. $150 well spent. It was a staph infection. I have no idea how I got it.
I would wonder whether you kept your coffee pot at almost floor level or had a very tall baby.
A lot of the stories at the previously linked site were mind-boggling but this exchange has me laughing for several minutes.
“Doc: What meds are you on?
Pt: Peanut butter balls.
Doc: What?
Pt: Peanut butter balls! Peanut butter balls, for my seizures!
Doc: Do you mean phenobarbital?”
So where do we go if not to the ER? When my son got an ear infection on vacation, Blue Cross said to go to the ER. They (the ER) spent 10 minutes looking in his ear and gave him a prescription for a decongestant. Total bill: $1400. There is no way WE were abusing the system, more like the system abused us and our insurance. The same service at an urgent care place two days later, where they discovered his ear infection, billed $300. A paying customer is hardly abusing the ER, even if they go in for something trivial.
One time I was waiting in an emergency room to have a follow-up for a previous visit, and a kid came in bare-chested, with his shirt balled up and pressed to his eye socket and blood running down his face and chest. His dad was steering him and they were almost running.
The ER folks admitted him before me, and when they came over to apologize to me I was heartily in agreement – PLEASE take cases like that over routine follow-ups!
His dad eventually came back into the waiting area smiling, so I assume it wasn’t as bad as it looked.
If you’re female and get an erection lasting four hours, you’re way beyond the ER’s power to help. But you may be able to make a name for yourself in specialty porn.
<slight hijack> Post number 4 from that–When I was in college, I fell and hit my head late at night in my dorm room, and required stitches in my eyebrow. A friend took me to the ER, and I ended up with the Abbot and Costello of the late night ER. A nurse and doctor who asked me what had happened. I explained. The male (kinda scary tattooed long haired–freaked me at the time*)nurse asked “So, it wasn’t Some Guy?”
Me: Huh?
Him: Well, most of the people at this time of night, it’s always Some Guy that did it.
Me: Huh??
Him: We’ll people will tell us ‘I wasn’t doing anything! And then SOME GUY came over…’
At which point, I started laughing, b/c I got it.
The Doc: You know, one time, I thought I’d met that guy!
Nurse: Was it him?
Doc: No—it was This Other Guy!!
And then we were all cracking up.
*The nurse was awesome and it helped me learn not to judge so much at an early age than I might not have
I’d like to add it must’ve been a very quiet night there. I think I saw just a few other patients and the nurse was standing outside taking a smoke break when I got there.
You should go to the ER if it’s Easter Sunday morning and your son has red streaks going up his arm from the cat bite he received on Saturday.
Not me–acquaintance. I don’t know her well enough to know how old the son is, but I assume twenty-something.
And while I’d have argued that the ER trip was a better idea than attending church Sunday based on the description of the wound, the fact that the son was not released from the hospital until this evening reinforces it.
