Adventures in Health Care Country
For the past few weeks, I've been fighting off a persistent (and annoying) cough. From time to time, I would also get tiny fevers temperature jumps of one or one-and-a-half-degrees; not enough to incapacitate me but enough to be uncomfortable. As well, just about every morning I would wake up with either my back muscles or chest muscles hurting fairly badly; bad enough to make inhaling deeply difficult.
Wednesday I called my doctor to make an appointment, suspecting an infection in my lungs (the fevers were the giveaway). My doctor is apparently on vacation, and the earliest he could see me is next Friday, August 6th. I went ahead and made the appointment.
Thursday afternoon I started feeling pretty short of breath, so I decided that on Friday i would go to the walk-in clinic near me and see them instead.
And then, on the way home on Thursday, I stopped breathing.
It took me a few moments to realize what was going on, and then there was a brief panicky period of denial (and by brief, I mean one second, tops sort of a "Jesus Christ, are my lungs not moving?? But they've always moved!") and then I started forcing myself to breathe, pushing air in and out in very short, shallow breaths: by back and chest muscles had tightened so badly that to try and draw anything even remotely resembling a "normal" breath caused massive amounts of pain.
It was at this moment that my friend Ian texted me to say "I'm 10 minutes away; want to do dinner?"
And so, instead of a yummy dinner, Ian got to drive me to the hospital.
I've never been in a hospital before as a patient, but I've been to the ER lots of times, so I knew to expect a wait. Fortunately, I had my iPhone with me, which has several movies on it. Unfortunately, my iPhone firmware was upgraded to the latest version last weekend, and that apparently removed all my movies from it. Crap. There's only so much Solitaire a man can play, and I certainly wasn't going to sing to my "I Am T-Pain" app in the waiting area.
The second I told them I was having problems breathing, I got to wear one of these stylish beasts:
Because this makes breathing so very much easier
Apparently that paper mask is made of magic paper that absorbs every single germ coming out of my mouth. After about seven hours or so, it also becomes pretty damp and sodden and uncomfortable, too. I imagine when I finally took it off that my side of it was positively teaming with germs. I hope they incinerated it.
Complimentary jewelry: another first for me
Things moved quite rapidly at first, luring me into a false sense of hope about timing. My chest was x-rayed within a half an hour ("Can I take a picture of the x-ray machine?" "Why?!?" [That said with such grave concern and suspicion that I could not pay it straight] "So my terrorist brethren know where best to strike." "Certainly not, then!"), and half an hour after that I was moved to the Rapid Assessment Zone. Somewhat appropriately, you get to sit under a sign that says "RAZ" in large red letters.
Now, that R is somewhat misleading. Perhaps it is accurate, and compared to the rest of the hospital it is lightning-quick. If so, woe unto the rest of the hospital. I sat there from just past 9pm until a doctor finally rolled into the ward at 1:30am. I can dig that the interns don't want to come into the RAZ waiting area, because all they'd get is a constant litany of "Is the doctor here yet, what the hell sort of hospital are you running anywhere, I still can't breathe", but it really sort of feels like they have dumped you and forgotten you. You're not sure if anyone is ever coming, and after a few hours of that, just getting up and going home starts to look pretty appealing.
The sum total of the RAZ reading material.
Both take equally long to read.
The doctor cannot see you unless you are in a bed (some sort of stigmatism, perhaps). I got my bed at 1:45am, put on my attractive blue gown with massive opening down the back, and sat back as best as I could (my back was killing), relieved to know that finally someone was going to help me.
So stylish
I cannot begin to describe the absolute crushing despair I felt when I realized, by 2:15am, that the doctor had left the ward again. He had strode up and down, dealing with various patients, and decided that I wasn't a high enough priority, and he would see me when he next returned to the ward. I had no idea how long that would be; it had taken him at least four-and-a-half hours to get to the ward the first time.
The doctor rolled back in at 3:25am. He saw me at 3:27, and discharged me at 3:31. It was a seven-and-a-half-hour wait and a four-minute diagnosis. He didn't give me anything, but gave me a prescription to get filled. I wasn't about to call Ian for a ride home (despite his insistence that I do so) at 3:30 in the morning, so I just took a cab home and slept as best I could.
It turns out I do have an infection in my lungs, although I don't know what kind of infection, because the doctor didn't explain anything to me. I'm still waking up with ridiculous muscle pain, but the doctor did nod when I said "Maybe that's related to the infection" so I'm hoping that goes away as the infection clears up. I'm on antibiotics and a steroid inhaler, as well as an as-needed inhaler. I woke up at 7:30 this morning because breathing was causing me pain, and I hit the inhalers right away as well as knocked back a couple of aspirins, and I'm breathing a lot better now and it doesn't hurt as much. So hopefully things will right themselves in the near future.
Part of my new daily routine
So: this was my first visit to the ER as a patient, and I think my last. The next time something bad happens "after hours" (and I've managed to go almost 49 years before the first instance, so here's hoping) if I can I'll tough it out until I can go to walk-in clinic the next morning. The walk-in would have taken maybe two hours and I likely would have ended up with the same prescription. And I wouldn't have to wear a paper mask for almost 8 hours, too, which is a plus.
Wednesday I called my doctor to make an appointment, suspecting an infection in my lungs (the fevers were the giveaway). My doctor is apparently on vacation, and the earliest he could see me is next Friday, August 6th. I went ahead and made the appointment.
Thursday afternoon I started feeling pretty short of breath, so I decided that on Friday i would go to the walk-in clinic near me and see them instead.
And then, on the way home on Thursday, I stopped breathing.
It took me a few moments to realize what was going on, and then there was a brief panicky period of denial (and by brief, I mean one second, tops sort of a "Jesus Christ, are my lungs not moving?? But they've always moved!") and then I started forcing myself to breathe, pushing air in and out in very short, shallow breaths: by back and chest muscles had tightened so badly that to try and draw anything even remotely resembling a "normal" breath caused massive amounts of pain.
It was at this moment that my friend Ian texted me to say "I'm 10 minutes away; want to do dinner?"
And so, instead of a yummy dinner, Ian got to drive me to the hospital.
I've never been in a hospital before as a patient, but I've been to the ER lots of times, so I knew to expect a wait. Fortunately, I had my iPhone with me, which has several movies on it. Unfortunately, my iPhone firmware was upgraded to the latest version last weekend, and that apparently removed all my movies from it. Crap. There's only so much Solitaire a man can play, and I certainly wasn't going to sing to my "I Am T-Pain" app in the waiting area.
The second I told them I was having problems breathing, I got to wear one of these stylish beasts:
Because this makes breathing so very much easier
Apparently that paper mask is made of magic paper that absorbs every single germ coming out of my mouth. After about seven hours or so, it also becomes pretty damp and sodden and uncomfortable, too. I imagine when I finally took it off that my side of it was positively teaming with germs. I hope they incinerated it.
Complimentary jewelry: another first for me
Things moved quite rapidly at first, luring me into a false sense of hope about timing. My chest was x-rayed within a half an hour ("Can I take a picture of the x-ray machine?" "Why?!?" [That said with such grave concern and suspicion that I could not pay it straight] "So my terrorist brethren know where best to strike." "Certainly not, then!"), and half an hour after that I was moved to the Rapid Assessment Zone. Somewhat appropriately, you get to sit under a sign that says "RAZ" in large red letters.
Now, that R is somewhat misleading. Perhaps it is accurate, and compared to the rest of the hospital it is lightning-quick. If so, woe unto the rest of the hospital. I sat there from just past 9pm until a doctor finally rolled into the ward at 1:30am. I can dig that the interns don't want to come into the RAZ waiting area, because all they'd get is a constant litany of "Is the doctor here yet, what the hell sort of hospital are you running anywhere, I still can't breathe", but it really sort of feels like they have dumped you and forgotten you. You're not sure if anyone is ever coming, and after a few hours of that, just getting up and going home starts to look pretty appealing.
The sum total of the RAZ reading material.
Both take equally long to read.
The doctor cannot see you unless you are in a bed (some sort of stigmatism, perhaps). I got my bed at 1:45am, put on my attractive blue gown with massive opening down the back, and sat back as best as I could (my back was killing), relieved to know that finally someone was going to help me.
So stylish
I cannot begin to describe the absolute crushing despair I felt when I realized, by 2:15am, that the doctor had left the ward again. He had strode up and down, dealing with various patients, and decided that I wasn't a high enough priority, and he would see me when he next returned to the ward. I had no idea how long that would be; it had taken him at least four-and-a-half hours to get to the ward the first time.
The doctor rolled back in at 3:25am. He saw me at 3:27, and discharged me at 3:31. It was a seven-and-a-half-hour wait and a four-minute diagnosis. He didn't give me anything, but gave me a prescription to get filled. I wasn't about to call Ian for a ride home (despite his insistence that I do so) at 3:30 in the morning, so I just took a cab home and slept as best I could.
It turns out I do have an infection in my lungs, although I don't know what kind of infection, because the doctor didn't explain anything to me. I'm still waking up with ridiculous muscle pain, but the doctor did nod when I said "Maybe that's related to the infection" so I'm hoping that goes away as the infection clears up. I'm on antibiotics and a steroid inhaler, as well as an as-needed inhaler. I woke up at 7:30 this morning because breathing was causing me pain, and I hit the inhalers right away as well as knocked back a couple of aspirins, and I'm breathing a lot better now and it doesn't hurt as much. So hopefully things will right themselves in the near future.
Part of my new daily routine
So: this was my first visit to the ER as a patient, and I think my last. The next time something bad happens "after hours" (and I've managed to go almost 49 years before the first instance, so here's hoping) if I can I'll tough it out until I can go to walk-in clinic the next morning. The walk-in would have taken maybe two hours and I likely would have ended up with the same prescription. And I wouldn't have to wear a paper mask for almost 8 hours, too, which is a plus.