I had to go to the Emergency Room in hospital last night...

Charli

Charli

cool little "title"
I had to go to the ER last night at the hospital and I learned a few things I thought I'd share:

1. Severe pain only occurs between 9pm-10pm when it is most inconvenient for you to go to the ER.

2. There are always 100 people in the ER waiting room before you no matter what time you go.

3. You wait at least two hours before you go to the back room.

4. Once you're in the back room, you see a nurse about an hour later.

5. Your vitals are always shot to hell because you are in freakin' pain!

6. Anything you have to swallow that they want you to take for pain almost never works, get me the drugs!

7. Morphine is lovely.

8. When they tell you they have a crappy machine in the ER that is for ultrasound, believe that they have a crappy machine in the ER for ultrasound.

9. When they can't find anything on their crappy machine, they wake up a Specialist in the middle of the night to make them take care of you.

10. The Specialist you just woke up in the middle of the night can't keep her eyes open.

11. Blood work bites.

12. When all your organs are in good shape because of the blood work test, it's almost worth the stabbing of the needle in your arm.

13. When the nurse tells you it's going to hurt a little when she stabs your arm, she lies, she means it's gonna hurt like HELL for two seconds and then you're fine.

14. There are too many physician assistants, nurses and doctors who ask you the same questions over and over - just please put my answers on a chalkboard and read my answers, don't make me repeat myself, I'm in pain, dammit!

15. I'm in pain until the morphine kicks in.

16. Morphine is lovely.

17. After spending the entire night in the ER, from 10pm-7:30am, the most they can tell me is that my stomach was inflamed.

18. I have no current insurance so now I want to kill myself.

19. Better safe to know you're okay then to IGNORE your pain, no matter what the cost.

20. Thing I'll remember most is some guy screaming - I want my urinal. Come on people, give the man his damn urinal.


**

All is well and now I'm going to sleep all day long.
 
had a similar experience going to the ER for what i learned was a kidney stone.
they let me skip all the people in the waiting room though. ceders-sinai is where it's at!!!
 
Gall stones aren't any fun. I went almost two years thinking I was having heart attacks, and my Doc kept insisting it was "smoker's band". His diagnostic skills suck, but he'll pass out the drugs. That is almost worth it... NOT!
 
if you want to avoid the long wait, you have to know the tricks of the trade. either pretend to be having a heart attack by faking chest pains and shortness of breath. or complain that you have "the worst headache you've ever had in your life". that should bump you to the top of the list. just make sure you make it past triage before revealing your true symptoms.
 
You could try lying flat and motionless on the floor, maybe that might get you noticed, or maybe they would just walk over you and not notice :)
 
I got right in by vomiting blood on the nurse while something crayon crayola black dribbled out the other end.

Internal bleeding gets you a pass to the front of the line and gets them to ask you for your cell phone to give your girlfriend so she can notify next of kin since you've lost two pints of blood and they don't know how much more you will lose.

that was fun, especially when they jammed the tube down my throat through my ruptured esophagus (the source of the bleeding) to pump my stomach - nice
 
Oh god, does that ever sound painful Jack. What happened, if you don't mind me asking.

-Kegan
 
Atcually it was not painful at all. My esophagus was raw and hemorrhaging like a general area ucler caused by chronic acid reflux. Tums and Rolaids are the devil and I had been popping them like candy for years. So it was partly stress related and partly due to acid reflux made worse by antacid tablets. They actually cause you to make more acid. But you can't feel the bleeding I think because your internal organs just aren't sensitive like that so you can do things like swallow without being in pain. So I had no pain, I was just light headed and vomiting blood. The only pain was the treatment, i.e. the tube.
 
yikes, about once a every month or two I have some sort of attack where it feels like a heart attack every time i swallow (but only after swallowing) and the above description is why i never go to the ER for it.
 
Charli said:
I had to go to the ER last night at the hospital and I learned a few things I thought I'd share:

1. Severe pain only occurs between 9pm-10pm when it is most inconvenient for you to go to the ER.

2. There are always 100 people in the ER waiting room before you no matter what time you go.

.
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ER's use the triage system, French for sorting. If you've got a gun shot wound in the chest you go straight to the front of the line. If you've got a bad ear ache you may have to wait, and if you've got an ear ache and at Martin Luther King Med Center you should be willing to wait 2 days in the ER before you get assistance.

Probably what you got was Demerol, not morphine, Demerol is a synthetic version, great stuff.
 
Thanks for the well wishes.

Jack - It's as though nothing had happened, weird. My stomach is fine and as precautionary measure, I am taking Pepcid at the doctor's instructions, though really, my stomach is fine.

The hard part of course is getting over the headache from being up all night. I'm not the kind of person that can take multiple naps during the day. I was able to eat fried rice, so as long as I watch what I eat and take rest, I'll be fine. Did I mention my son is coming down for a visit and we're suppose to go to Disneyland? lol - Jack, sorry to hear about the throat and stuff, that definitely will get you to the head of the line. I got stuck waiting.

Still, hearing that guy yell - I WANT MY URINAL! - which I think he meant he wanted to be taken to a urinal, that was the creme moment last night.

FYI - the EKG guys see a lot of breast, lol.
 
"I WANT MY URINAL", yes I can just picture it, some spotted face teenager using it as his "ringtone" for his mobile/cell.

Good to hear that your doing well.
 
Charli said:
Thanks for the well wishes.

Jack - It's as though nothing had happened, weird. My stomach is fine and as precautionary measure, I am taking Pepcid at the doctor's instructions, though really, my stomach is fine.

The hard part of course is getting over the headache from being up all night. I'm not the kind of person that can take multiple naps during the day. I was able to eat fried rice, so as long as I watch what I eat and take rest, I'll be fine. Did I mention my son is coming down for a visit and we're suppose to go to Disneyland? lol - Jack, sorry to hear about the throat and stuff, that definitely will get you to the head of the line. I got stuck waiting.

Still, hearing that guy yell - I WANT MY URINAL! - which I think he meant he wanted to be taken to a urinal, that was the creme moment last night.

FYI - the EKG guys see a lot of breast, lol.
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If you don't mind me asking Charli ? How old are you ?

When I was younger Late teens; I used to have ganrly episodes of pain in my stomach; bad bad bad

Emergency called more than once
 
my wife has witnessed some crazy things during the few times she has worked in the ER. last october a man got angry about waiting to see someone in the ER. so he went outside with his mother, got in his car and drove it into the front wall of the emergency center. his mother broke both of her arms and ending up dying later on from her injuries.
 
chris f said:
yikes, about once a every month or two I have some sort of attack where it feels like a heart attack every time i swallow (but only after swallowing) and the above description is why i never go to the ER for it.
Click to expand...

i get that too, its a cramp of your interior back muscles. the ones that hold your esophogus. that means get more excersie.
 
I had to go to the ER a couple weeks ago because I punched a wall and thought I broke my wrist.

Luckily it was just a false alarm. Nevertheless, driving there was an experience I won't forget...
 
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