Off My Noodle

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Hospital ER -- No Place to Be Sick

(This material copyright Judy Gruen. For permission to reprint online or in print, contact . Linking to this page is highly recommended; copying articles without permission is a bad idea.)

Not long ago I had a minor medical emergency, requiring my husband to ferry me to the closest emergency room.

This well-known hospital is festooned with names of glamorous movie stars who have endowed its buildings and wings, and whose blazing Hollywood smiles have graced the covers of more magazines than we can count, reminding us that our teeth will never be as white as theirs. And yet, the ER affiliated with all this razzle-dazzle was crammed with people in all kinds of misery. Several appeared to be homeless, including one who was shouting to an imaginary enemy. Was I supposed to get better in a place like this? 

(For a moment, I was reminded of an old joke about an elderly Jewish man who also found himself in the emergency room. The doctor asked the man, “Are you comfortable?” The man shrugged and said, “I make a living.” If you’re Jewish, you’ll find this funny.)

“I changed my mind. Let’s go home,” I said to my husband, shuddering at all the suffering around me. Now I began to understand the health care crisis even more. Although I had already signed in, I realized I’d probably get faster treatment if I flew to Canada, declared myself a citizen, and put my name on the year-long waiting list for emergency medical treatment.

We drove across town to another hospital, which had a much smaller ER. We figured, even if that was also packed, it least it would be packed with fewer people. At the other hospital, a man came in and asked for a tetanus shot.

“This is an emergency room,” explained the triage nurse.  “We don’t give tetanus shots.”
“Well, can you at least call my doctor and tell him I need to change my appointment to next Thursday?”

A drunk was sleeping it off while stretching out on most of the available chair space in the small waiting room. Frankly, I wouldn’t have sat there unless the Centers for Disease Control had sterilized the place first.

Fortunately, we were soon ushered into a room, though it was not bigger than a telephone booth. A sign on the door said, “Oxygen in use.” This, at least, was reassuring. While grateful for the use of the oxygen (breathing is always helpful in stressful situations), I immediately suspected that our HMO would seize the opportunity to charge us extra for using it, unless we could get a doctor to prescribe it for us as medically necessary.

After a brief examination, the ER physician decided to send me for Tests of a Private and Invasive Nature. Wearing two old sheets with armholes and a blanket, I sat in a wheelchair while a fresh-faced young volunteer steered me to my destination. I was horrified to realize that someone had taped a large card on the back of the wheelchair that said, “4th floor, PRIVATE AND INVASIVE TEST DEPARTMENT.” It wasn’t bad enough that I now resembled some of the unfortunate homeless people in the other hospital’s waiting room; additionally, everyone would know that I might have an embarrassing problem, too.

Despite my anxiety, I wasn’t seriously worried about my health. I figured that my condition was not something that needed looking up in a compendium of bizarre medical anomalies. Yet I was unnerved watching the poker-faces of the two men conducting tests on me. One pointed at something on a screen, and leaned in close, whispering to the other guy. What were they saying?  Were those steely expressions hiding some grim conclusion? Or were they simply regretting having had that burrito with extra onions at lunch? 

One thing’s for sure: Finding yourself in the emergency room makes you feel even more vulnerable than you feel in the Loehmann’s communal dressing room. Even when we have taken our kids to the ER for stitches and other usual childhood scrapes, sharing the waiting room with those who are seriously ill or wounded was a sobering reminder of life can turn upside down in a matter of seconds. And seeing people who had no family or friends with them in a time of such need also reminded us how blessed we are to have family, friends, health, community - and health insurance, as frightfully expensive as it is.

A bit later, we were only too happy to leave the ER and go home, grateful for the caring medical service we received, and especially for giving us a room with oxygen. Not only did I turn out not to have anything either serious or seriously embarrassing, but even better, our HMO didn’t even charge us extra for the oxygen. 


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