the Hearbreak of Suburbia
Mar. 10th, 2010 07:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_siobhanI hate hospital emergency rooms. Hate them, hate them, hate hate hate.
Don't get me wrong, I'm fully aware that they are a necessity. In fact I think they are a great system if a person is in urgent, immediate, life-threatening need. Definitely the place I want to be if I have a heart attack, or get into a horrible car accident or immediately after being chased naked out of a third-story window by a jealous husband.
But if you have something that isn't immediately life-threatening wrong with you, boy howdy do they blow chunks.
I went to emerg on Monday morning. It was totally my doctor's idea. Her logic is that if the pain is bad enough that it won't respond to over-the-counter medication, I should go to the hospital where the surgeon works and it might actually me get scheduled for surgery faster than if I continue to just tough it out. (My doctor went through the whole adenomyosis thing with me, so she knows how hospital-avoidant[1] I am.)
I had to admit that there was some logic to her argument. If whether or not I went to the hospital is a measure of severity in the mind of the person asking the question; then I want to be able to say yes even if the more accurate answer is, "Only if I were actually in the process of dying and couldn't figure out a way to rig up a sufficient life support mechanism to keep me going until the walk-in clinic opens."
So I had the usual throb-throb-THROB-throb going on for most of last week. On Sunday night it started to get less throbby and more stabby. At 2 AM I took my usual handful of painkillers. At 4 AM I woke Axel up and asked him to take me to the hospital.
My first reaction when I walked into the place was that my gallbladder had actually done me a favour in it's timing. This particular hospital is in a fairly quiet neighbourhood and the time between pub-letting-out and morning-commute is usually the quietest shift on the clock anyway. There was one triage nurse killing time by having a conversation with some of the other staff who waved me over to her desk to take my information. There were fewer than a half-dozen other people dozing on the waiting room chairs or stretched out on gurneys. And it continued to be quiet all night. In the entire time I was there only two other people come in, and one of them was just as I was leaving.
And I honestly have no frigging' idea why I didn't get to see a doctor. In the (two? three?) hours I was there I saw exactly one person called in from the waiting room and one person discharged. The guy who came in after me might very well have been bumped ahead of me in line, but that would have moved me down the priority list by exactly well, one.
Maybe their were hidden rows of examining rooms full of people behind doors I couldn't see, and secret passages where staff were running about sequestered from view. Maybe the entire medical team had been taken out by Norwalk virus. All I can do is compare it to the uncountable number of the emergency rooms I've been to in the past, almost always in busy downtown hospitals. And when they're getting slammed you know it. People are constantly moving in and out; patients, family members, support staff, cops, paramedics. Even if it was hours before I actually saw a real live doctor, there was a constant ebb and flow of human traffic. At the very least I can measure the creep of progress by the people who are pulled out of the waiting room. The only traffic I saw on Monday morning was one guy getting up to stretch his legs and Axel buying the world's scariest looking sandwich out of the vending machine. And the giant minute hand on the big white clock s-o-o-o sl-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-owly reminding me how long I had already been sitting there.
At 8 AM I burst into tears all over the triage nurse and begged Axel to take me back home again.
Then I phoned up the surgeon's receptionist and literally pleaded with her to get me an earlier appointment. She promised to squeeze me in before the other patients Monday morning if I show up early. I'm half-tempted to bring her some flowers.
[1] Less sensitive people call me stubborn.
Don't get me wrong, I'm fully aware that they are a necessity. In fact I think they are a great system if a person is in urgent, immediate, life-threatening need. Definitely the place I want to be if I have a heart attack, or get into a horrible car accident or immediately after being chased naked out of a third-story window by a jealous husband.
But if you have something that isn't immediately life-threatening wrong with you, boy howdy do they blow chunks.
I went to emerg on Monday morning. It was totally my doctor's idea. Her logic is that if the pain is bad enough that it won't respond to over-the-counter medication, I should go to the hospital where the surgeon works and it might actually me get scheduled for surgery faster than if I continue to just tough it out. (My doctor went through the whole adenomyosis thing with me, so she knows how hospital-avoidant[1] I am.)
I had to admit that there was some logic to her argument. If whether or not I went to the hospital is a measure of severity in the mind of the person asking the question; then I want to be able to say yes even if the more accurate answer is, "Only if I were actually in the process of dying and couldn't figure out a way to rig up a sufficient life support mechanism to keep me going until the walk-in clinic opens."
So I had the usual throb-throb-THROB-throb going on for most of last week. On Sunday night it started to get less throbby and more stabby. At 2 AM I took my usual handful of painkillers. At 4 AM I woke Axel up and asked him to take me to the hospital.
My first reaction when I walked into the place was that my gallbladder had actually done me a favour in it's timing. This particular hospital is in a fairly quiet neighbourhood and the time between pub-letting-out and morning-commute is usually the quietest shift on the clock anyway. There was one triage nurse killing time by having a conversation with some of the other staff who waved me over to her desk to take my information. There were fewer than a half-dozen other people dozing on the waiting room chairs or stretched out on gurneys. And it continued to be quiet all night. In the entire time I was there only two other people come in, and one of them was just as I was leaving.
And I honestly have no frigging' idea why I didn't get to see a doctor. In the (two? three?) hours I was there I saw exactly one person called in from the waiting room and one person discharged. The guy who came in after me might very well have been bumped ahead of me in line, but that would have moved me down the priority list by exactly well, one.
Maybe their were hidden rows of examining rooms full of people behind doors I couldn't see, and secret passages where staff were running about sequestered from view. Maybe the entire medical team had been taken out by Norwalk virus. All I can do is compare it to the uncountable number of the emergency rooms I've been to in the past, almost always in busy downtown hospitals. And when they're getting slammed you know it. People are constantly moving in and out; patients, family members, support staff, cops, paramedics. Even if it was hours before I actually saw a real live doctor, there was a constant ebb and flow of human traffic. At the very least I can measure the creep of progress by the people who are pulled out of the waiting room. The only traffic I saw on Monday morning was one guy getting up to stretch his legs and Axel buying the world's scariest looking sandwich out of the vending machine. And the giant minute hand on the big white clock s-o-o-o sl-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-owly reminding me how long I had already been sitting there.
At 8 AM I burst into tears all over the triage nurse and begged Axel to take me back home again.
Then I phoned up the surgeon's receptionist and literally pleaded with her to get me an earlier appointment. She promised to squeeze me in before the other patients Monday morning if I show up early. I'm half-tempted to bring her some flowers.
[1] Less sensitive people call me stubborn.