Long version of the story
I figured after yesterday's post that I should also post about the rest of the afternoon/evening as we tried to get my finger dealt with. The cut happened about 3:10, and we got to the ER about 15 minutes later, having wrapped it in gauze ourselves. Upon arrival, the intake nurse took the gauze off, looked at it, flinched (a bad sign), and rewrapped it. Shortly before 7, I went back up to the desk and made it known that I had funk fermenting in my finger (since the knife was covered in rotten hippo and everything that grows in it), and that nobody had disinfected it or anything yet. So the nurse unwraps it again, rinses it in saline, and rewraps it again. She also checks the back and reports that a new PA had just come on, that he was signing people out, and that it shouldn’t be long.
At about 8, after playing 20 questions with various people, we discover that there are five charts in front of me to go in. The person doing triage, whom I had dealt with upon initially arriving said that when I arrived there were 6 or 7 in front of me. They’d called a lot more than that during the previous four and a half hours, and at the rate of a two-slot advance in priority in four and a half hours, that still left over 12 hours of waiting before I could even get called back, let alone them doing anything to me.
This all occurred at Greater Southeast Community Hospital, the closest one to the lab, which is located in Suitland, just outside southeast DC. We didn’t realize when we were headed there that we’d crossed into the District, and Southeast at that. Had we known it then, we would have gone elsewhere earlier. So shortly after 8 we pick up and leave, heading to Silver Spring (northeast of the District) where my boss/lodger lives and where I’m staying, to Holy Cross Hospital.
The arrival stamp there said 8:52, and shortly after 10 I was called back for x-rays (thought I’m not sure why). I didn’t see the doc until about 11:45, at which time he numbed me up, put five stitches in me, and turned me back over to the nurse. A tetanus shot and a scrip for antibiotics finished it up, and we were gone at 12:20.
I'm definitely getting better at typing with the badaged finger. It's kinda funny watching it, almost cartoonish.
At about 8, after playing 20 questions with various people, we discover that there are five charts in front of me to go in. The person doing triage, whom I had dealt with upon initially arriving said that when I arrived there were 6 or 7 in front of me. They’d called a lot more than that during the previous four and a half hours, and at the rate of a two-slot advance in priority in four and a half hours, that still left over 12 hours of waiting before I could even get called back, let alone them doing anything to me.
This all occurred at Greater Southeast Community Hospital, the closest one to the lab, which is located in Suitland, just outside southeast DC. We didn’t realize when we were headed there that we’d crossed into the District, and Southeast at that. Had we known it then, we would have gone elsewhere earlier. So shortly after 8 we pick up and leave, heading to Silver Spring (northeast of the District) where my boss/lodger lives and where I’m staying, to Holy Cross Hospital.
The arrival stamp there said 8:52, and shortly after 10 I was called back for x-rays (thought I’m not sure why). I didn’t see the doc until about 11:45, at which time he numbed me up, put five stitches in me, and turned me back over to the nurse. A tetanus shot and a scrip for antibiotics finished it up, and we were gone at 12:20.
I'm definitely getting better at typing with the badaged finger. It's kinda funny watching it, almost cartoonish.