Posted on 10/26/2008 5:34:19 AM PDT by 60Gunner
My son’s girlfriend had them waiting for her at the door. We just called in and said that she had been bitten by a rattlesnake.
My 85 yr old MIL was very sick Christmas day and they told her it would be at least 4 hrs to be seen. She’s probably been to the doctor less in her lifetime than 25% of the people see one in a year and when she wants to go to the emergency room, you take her.
My husband just brought her home to me and I made her some pedialite stuff and made her drink it but she probably would have recovered faster with an IV and some medication.
You are smart. Giving her fluids was probably the best thing you could have done for her.
It did occur to me to say I was having chest pains, but ... I won’t lie like that. When I’m sick I want a good diagnosis and don’t want them wading through misdirection.
I don’t really have any answers at this point. If there was some way I could have moved to higher spot on the triage list I would have.
I was fortunate. I lived.
Holy Moly, I’m sure glad you’re okay.
Oh, c'mon, no road surfing on the top of the pickup?
In all seriousness though, If I ever pulled any of this stuff I would be ashamed to look at myself in the mirror.
Short of a severed part of the body or a broken bone I can't imagine why anyone would WANT to go to the ER.
First, as I stated in my first reply to you, many variables may have been in play on the day you visited the ER: size of the ER, staffing, how sick the patients in the beds were at the time you visited, how crowded the waiting area was, etc.
I cannot answer for that ER or its staff. I also will not minimize your suffering. Kidney infections just plain hurt. It may have been a combination of factors.
I know you have already shared a great deal of your experiences. If you like, you can share more via personal message. I am very interested in your insight. I cannot promise that my answer will perfectly match your questions, but I do promise to answer them to the best of my knowledge and ability. Are you alright with this? I look forward to hearing from you. With warmest regard, Gunner
Thanks for listening. I gave you a few more details via freepmail. Again, I don’t have any answers. There are so many abusing the system that they make for worse service for those of us who don’t.
Is 8 hours good of bad? Cause it took my doctor and various specialists over 3 months to diagnose me (properly) when I had appendicitis. I avoided the ER, though, because I had been sick with something nobody could figure out for three months, then on a road trip to NYC I started throwing up and was in so much pain I could hardly move. I took a lot of painkillers, and when I got back (on a Saturday morning) I called the doctor. The whole ‘pain test’ didn’t work, as my doctor decided it was probably a kidney stone, maybe a kidney infection, maybe female issues, and a slim chance of appendicitis. However, when the CAT scan showed nothing, someone finally figured that since everything else was eliminated, it must be my appendix, and it turned out that was true when they went ahead and did the surgery.
Then, a couple weeks later, I had kidney stones. But, when I had come in complaining of intense pain where I recently had intenstinal surgery, nausea, vomiting, and fever, I guess the nurse assumed the surgery site had become infected, so I got in and got some pain meds within 30 minutes. So, I spent from 9 PM to 3 AM in the ER on a saturday night, which was quite the educational and somewhat amusing - probably due to aforementioned pain meds - experience. There were definitely people in there who were fishing for drugs, including a loud, crude lesbian couple, one of whom needed ‘stronger’ pain meds than she was already on for her back pain, and two separate family groups who both brought all of their hyperactive children because one of those children ‘had a toothache and needed vicodin’.
Your list cracks me up, because I know every one of those is true.
We have a problem with ER abuse here as well. It gripes me to watch illegal aliens sitting there using it for general medical care, knowing that they will not be paying for their visits, while my daughter, who has no insurance since she is an hourly worker will be.
(sigh) I’m not sure what can be done about it either, since the local government is not working too hard at getting rid of the illegals.
On a brighter note, the only time I ever went to the ER I was in a room and being examined in less than 2 minutes, diagnosed and transferred to another hospital (because there was a specialist there) within hours. I could not have received better care.
I admire your professionalism and restraint.
Some of these folks sound only good for field goal practice, as in “That one cleared the streetlight—woweee!”
I saw one of those folks coming to my local ER trying for the Oscar. Had to go with a friend who cut her hand. We watched the guy walk jauntily toward the doors to the waiting room, glass doors, mind, top to bottom. He comes through the door, didn’t hit into it or anything, and all of a sudden he can hardly walk and falls down on the floor rolling around in “pain.” There were a lot of folks sitting there, and we all laughed our tushes off!
I look forward to these, 60Gunner, and can’t wait til you post the next installment to your trip.
Yes, except it’s not cute when you really need to use the ER.
I do anything to avoid going to the ER. However, one time it was obvious I had a broken bone. I went to the ER and sat in the waiting room four hours before being seen. In front of me were numerous babies with runny noses and all the types of characters noted in this article.
I would like to see more specialized ER-type facilities that you could use a couple of times a year and have it covered by your insurance. For Pete’s sake, if you think you’ve broken a bone, why can’t you pull up to a clinic, pretty much immediately be given an x-ray, then leave or have it treated?
Good grief, my son had a soccer hit and we really needed to make sure he did not have a break. Five hours later . . .
The ER is so broken. Mostly because the ER is abused by “patients,” but everyone pays for that.
When my son took a nasty hit to his elbow recently, I was allowed to go in with him when the x-rays were taken. We stood in the booth and the digital x-rays were wonderful! Obviously there was no break or dislocation.
I realize these have to be read by “someone,” but FIVE HOURS later, we were called in to be informed that my son had not broken his elbow.
WHY?
We didn’t even want to see the doctor if there was no break. We only needed to know the result of the x-ray (because of my son’s history).
Once they finally told us what we had all seen with our own eyes, we RAN out of the ER. The doctor was calling out “do you want a sling or pain med?”-—give me a break!
OTOH, once I was sitting there with a bone poking out of my leg and I also waited 3 hours to even get an x-ray, a couple more for it to be read, more in the back room to see the doctor to tell me I had a broken leg (oh, really?), then sent to the cast room, where I waited a few more hours to have a cast put on.
The whole thing was a nightmare. The pain was incredible and sitting there with no help whatsoever, while babies with runny noses were called back, was shameful. And I’d had no choice but to bring our own young children with us to the ER; they were there all those hours, in those gross conditions, for absolutely no reason.
It really stunk. I take no solace from the fact that it is worse in other countries.
I understand exactly what triage is, but have yet to see it applied in any way that makes sense. How can a patient with an obviously broken leg not be taken back immediately for an x-ray? Or offered a place to lay down rather than having to sit in the waiting room?
Since no one really knows what’s wrong with the vast majority of patients when they come in, and the vast majority probably have relatively nonspecific symptoms, I suspect that triage is frequently a lot less exact than “a kidney stone trumps migraine,” etc.
I posted about my experience with an obviously broken leg—the bone was sticking out.
The pain was incredible! Though my spouse drove me to the ER, we also had to bring our young children with us. The entire family sat in the waiting room for HOURS and HOURS before I even got an x-ray. Then HOURS and HOURS to get seen by the doc and then to finally get a cast on -—then another HOUR before the nurse came to do the dreaded “discharge” instructions, which drone on and on.
It made no sense at all. I have talked to several people who had a similar experience with broken bones.
What is so hard about takign the broken bone cases in, getting the x-ray, getting it read, then either sending them on their way or sending them to the cast room?
Why isn’t triage conducted not only on the nature of the medical problem, but also on the NATURE OF THE REQUIRED ASSESSMENT?
Wow.
I thank God on your behalf.
Thanks Gunner.
I had a IV drug user call me wanting to know if the Oxycontin he disolved in bleach was safe to shoot up.
When I was in the ER for stitches in my hand a few months ago, during the four hours that I waited bleeding in the ER, I sat across from a guy who the triage nurse had diagnosed as having been bitten by a brown recluse spider. In the course of that four hours, the bite mark went from being the size of a nickel and approximately flat (I'm not peering too closely at any strange man's thigh) to the size of a 50-cent piece and visibly swollen. He was still sitting there when I finally got my stitches (only 4, and the bill, which fortunately my insurance paid, was ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS).
Ammonia caps are good detection units for fake seizures.
LOL very funny. I can only imagine what you have to go thru.
Many years ago my (now ex) husband cut his hand open on the job. He waited for about 3 hours before someone saw him at Bellevue Hospital in NYC. In all fairness there was a guy who’d been waiting as long as he had, and he’d been shot several times. LOL
Glad you hospital jumped.
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