Medical update : nothing new to report. Joe dropped me off, I got the IV antibiotics, took the 407 bus home.
Two small things : I am quite proud that I managed to thank one of the nurses for helping me by name.
That’s a big deal for me. It took a pretty large dose of nerve for me to do so.
Because it meant leaving the shelter of passive anonymity and entering the world of interpersonal interaction, albeit in a very small way.
Basically, it meant I had to be a person, and that is very hard for me.
I feel like I am not really explaining it right, but it will have to do.
The other noteworthy thing was that when I was making my way from Registration to the ER and the door between them wouldn’t open.
I pushed again, no dice. Then some old fella jumps up, tells me not to push the bar and that I need a card to get back there.
I said the most logical thing I could think of at the time : “Since when??”
I had been through that door at least a dozen times before, and I had never needed a card. So what gives?
This threw me off enough that I asked my nurse about it. And she said that actially, that door has technically always required the card, but that the people in Registration are usually on the ball and push the button to let people through when they approach the door and Registration knows they belong back there.
Ergo, what made today different was that Registration dropped the ball.
And that’s…. weird. Not in an important way, just in a purely personal way. I had no idea this was happening… until it didn’t.
Other than that, my visit was uneventful….. for me.
But the emergency room waiting room has not one, not two, but three people who had been there more than three hours and were getting very frustrated at the lack of literally anything happening in their case.
And one of them had a legit broken leg. Like, they had done the X-rays and everything.
I mean, what the FUCK, people?
Being the sponge I am, I soaked up some of these peope’s frustration. And being a guy with a big heart and a super analytical brain that is fond of sytems, I had to figure out why these people were going through hospital hell when I had not.
Obviously it wasn’t their fault. They did everything right. Scratch that off the list.
So it had to be something about our cases. And after cogitating on that for a while, it hit me : the difference is that my case was very dramatic.
The hospital staff took one look at the septic nightmare on my knee and said ‘you know, that there looks like something we should take care of right away. “
And maybe they were right. I don’t know enough to say.
But I can’t help but wonder if there were people in a lot more pain and distress than I who didn’t make it to the top of the charts in triage simply because they had something boring and invisible like a broken leg or chest pains.
As to what the problem is in general, I do not know. Maybe treating people in the ER takes a lot longer than I would think. I dunno.
But the results are clearly unacceptable. People are pissed off and they have every right to be. Something has done terribly wrong.
I know the problem isn’t at Registration (aka Admitting). They are super damned efficient. I am very impressed.
The problem is clearly in Emergency. There is a distinct lack of urgency in the air. Now maybe that’s how it should be – after all, my main image of ERs comes from medical dramas, and they are always in a rush there, with gurneys being pushed through swinging doors while people deliver expositional medical babble.
“What do we have here?'”
“Reticular contusion of the medula clitora with a concurrent hemotoma on the third, fifth, and ninth vertebra, sir!”
“Dammit…. not another one. Get me 50 cc’s of hydropropolinoleum and prep the futon chamber for full fraffulence!”
That was fun as hell to write.
But without an understanding of how, exactly, things work in that ER, I can’t determine whether there is room for improvement.
Maybe this is legit as fast as things can go. I can’t prove otherwise.
I’d like to think there is room for improvement in any system, especially with me on the case, but that feeling is not, alas, evidence.
All I know is that if you ask the patients, things are fucked up and it’s not right.
Surely they can do better.
I’m going in circles. Time to change the subject.
Not gonna make it out to hang with Joe and Felicity today. Mostly because I have to be at the hospital at 8:30 am again tomorrow.
Apparently, Infectious Disease Specialists don’t do afternoons, period. My doctor is now Doctor Vortel, and he is only in the ER from 8:30 am to 10 am too.
Heaven forbid that a doctor show up according to what is good for the patient. That would violate everything they stand for doctors.
After all, they might have to play less golf that way. And all account of some peasant of a patient? Nonsense.
Not that I’m bitter.
I’m cranky. That’s totally different.
I don’t like having to get up that early. Granted, it’s a perfectly normal time for most people, you know, those people with like, jobs n’ shit.
But I am not most people.
I am a strange and unnatural creature. delicate and bizarre, shockingly unsuited for the tooth and claw world of the jungle but so charming and adorable that people are willing to protect me from the wild world out there.
But that’s not enough. I want so many things that are impossible for me to get while remaining the sad little puppy that I am.
I want to become strong enough to go out there and make it on my own. I want to grab and get all the things I have always needed or wanted but was never strong enough to seize for myself/.
I want to live, god dammit, and be a real person, legitimate, with my own identity and my own strengths and virtues and nothing to be ashamed of.
And some day, I swear, I will make it there.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.