Emergency Experience
I hate the Emergency room.
For that matter I not all that fond of much of anything to do with health care. Don't mind the dentist. He / She has the power of immediate relief of overwhelming pain.
So anyway I had to spend a good portion of the day sitting in the waiting room of the Emergency room at the local hospital. Let me say that nobody is dead or dying and as I don't feel free to publish about health matter that are not my own, I'll just leave it at I had to accompany a person to the hospital.
First of all there is the air conditioning thing. The place isn't cool, it is cold, bone chilling cold. If you have any arthritis problems, sitting in the waiting room at the hospital will aggravate it to no end.
Like the bus, there is always someone who is either crazy or just so worked up from sitting in this room for hours on end that they need to talk and talk, to you, to the person next to you, on their cell phone, it doesn't matter. Being the anti -social worry prone individual that I am, I want to distract myself with a book. This is hard when people insist on being loud.
The special treat of the day was the mentally challenged adult who wheeled around the room for an hour excusing himself past me every so often who finally got tired of playing in the wheel chair and just stood up and started sitting next to people at random. Here is a man who desperately needs some kind of adult supervision and all the security personnel can say when he pushes the chair off to the side for the fifth or sixth time is, "Oh are you done with that?" Where, oh where, is the matronly volunteers of old who knew how to tell someone who acts in such a fashion to, "Sit down and behave like a big boy."
Then there is the time factor. Never a quick trip to the emergency room. Just write off the rest of the day. Maybe you can get a bite to eat later.
Food. One vending machine in the hallway to the men's room. A group of children standing in front of it making decisions blocking the path to said facilities. Bastards.
Bathroom . Who wants to use the public restroom in a place full of sick people. Not me. Smelled realy bad of nasty butt stink too.
Fortunately today, as it was none of my business, I didn't have to deal with the admitting forms and insurance beurocratic garbage.
Then there are the coughing people. These days they slap a mask on the coffers first thing. Still my hypochondria has me shiver inwardly with every cough. (I try not to show it out of courtesy, but it is hard to hide things like contempt or fear or terror.) They scare me. I see little tv blips of chinese people wearing masks in my vivid imagination. My mind screams, "SARS! Run! Soylent green is made of people!"
Children. Today they were not a problem. I suppose parents scared for their little ones health don't let em run rampant unsupervised.
Then there was the TV. Fortunately it was Sunday. This meant football. Even though I don't like sports, it is a million times better than trying to sit in a waiting room with weekday daytime television on. Soaps, Springer, Oprah, you name it weekday day time TV is mind numbingly stupid and aggravating. It raises my blood pressure just being in the same room as that garbage.
Anxiety. I don't deal with it very well and being in a room waiting for hours with no knowledge of what is going on is prone to produce this in excess. I had a stomach full of acid by the time we left. Then there is the entire contemplation or mortality thing. Hospitals exacerbate it. I'm still in denial of my mortality and like Yossarian of Catch 22 fame I'm going to live for ever or die trying.
Book picture link of course.
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For that matter I not all that fond of much of anything to do with health care. Don't mind the dentist. He / She has the power of immediate relief of overwhelming pain.
So anyway I had to spend a good portion of the day sitting in the waiting room of the Emergency room at the local hospital. Let me say that nobody is dead or dying and as I don't feel free to publish about health matter that are not my own, I'll just leave it at I had to accompany a person to the hospital.
First of all there is the air conditioning thing. The place isn't cool, it is cold, bone chilling cold. If you have any arthritis problems, sitting in the waiting room at the hospital will aggravate it to no end.
Like the bus, there is always someone who is either crazy or just so worked up from sitting in this room for hours on end that they need to talk and talk, to you, to the person next to you, on their cell phone, it doesn't matter. Being the anti -social worry prone individual that I am, I want to distract myself with a book. This is hard when people insist on being loud.
The special treat of the day was the mentally challenged adult who wheeled around the room for an hour excusing himself past me every so often who finally got tired of playing in the wheel chair and just stood up and started sitting next to people at random. Here is a man who desperately needs some kind of adult supervision and all the security personnel can say when he pushes the chair off to the side for the fifth or sixth time is, "Oh are you done with that?" Where, oh where, is the matronly volunteers of old who knew how to tell someone who acts in such a fashion to, "Sit down and behave like a big boy."
Then there is the time factor. Never a quick trip to the emergency room. Just write off the rest of the day. Maybe you can get a bite to eat later.
Food. One vending machine in the hallway to the men's room. A group of children standing in front of it making decisions blocking the path to said facilities. Bastards.
Bathroom . Who wants to use the public restroom in a place full of sick people. Not me. Smelled realy bad of nasty butt stink too.
Fortunately today, as it was none of my business, I didn't have to deal with the admitting forms and insurance beurocratic garbage.
Then there are the coughing people. These days they slap a mask on the coffers first thing. Still my hypochondria has me shiver inwardly with every cough. (I try not to show it out of courtesy, but it is hard to hide things like contempt or fear or terror.) They scare me. I see little tv blips of chinese people wearing masks in my vivid imagination. My mind screams, "SARS! Run! Soylent green is made of people!"
Children. Today they were not a problem. I suppose parents scared for their little ones health don't let em run rampant unsupervised.
Then there was the TV. Fortunately it was Sunday. This meant football. Even though I don't like sports, it is a million times better than trying to sit in a waiting room with weekday daytime television on. Soaps, Springer, Oprah, you name it weekday day time TV is mind numbingly stupid and aggravating. It raises my blood pressure just being in the same room as that garbage.
Anxiety. I don't deal with it very well and being in a room waiting for hours with no knowledge of what is going on is prone to produce this in excess. I had a stomach full of acid by the time we left. Then there is the entire contemplation or mortality thing. Hospitals exacerbate it. I'm still in denial of my mortality and like Yossarian of Catch 22 fame I'm going to live for ever or die trying.
Book picture link of course.
More Laters
posted by Rich Rosenthal II at 2:10 AM
2 Comments:
Emergency rooms are never a good place to be--especially in the case of an emergency.
being around that many ill people is terrifying even when you aren't a germaphobe and being around ill people who are coughing, sneezing and oozing doesn't make matters better.
as for the bathroom, i'd rather piss myself and claim to be incompetent than pee in the hospital facility. hell, i'd rather pee in the bathroom at the bar.
The womens bathroom at te bar was one of the nastiest smeling things I ever had to clean. While the floor of the me's room s usually covered in urine it s trongly diluted by beer.
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