| tales from the ghetto hospital |
[Jan. 29th, 2008|04:30 am] |
Not having a primary care physician, I had to go to the nearest ER for my eyes. This happened to be at the Doctor's Medical Center in San Pablo.
I arrived at the ER, signed in, and sat down. It was about 10 AM, and the waiting room was about half full. It was about an hour and a half before I was called in to see the triage nurse. She asked some questions, filled out some forms, and checked my vitals. She took me over to read the eye chart, and handed me a styrofoam cup to cover my other eye with. As I was reading the chart, I had to ask her a few times not to cover the bottom half of the letter she was pointing to with her finger. Once that was done, she took me back to an exam room. The chair looked like they found it next to a dumpster behind a dentist's office, and it wobbled as I sat down.
She handed me a gown and a blanket and told me the doctor would be with me shortly. I put on the gown, and shortly after, covered myself with the blanket as well. He came in and asked me the same questions as the triage nurse. This is where I first began to feel uncomfortable. Shouldn't he read what the nurse wrote first? He examined my eyes, and told me that it was a subconjunctival hemorrhage, but that he was not sure what caused it. It would probably clear up on its own, but he wanted to do some blood tests to make sure it wasn't more serious.
After about another 15 minutes or so, a nurse walks in with a tray. She asks me if anyone has drawn my blood yet (she doesn't know?). I tell her no, and she begins. She ties the tourniquet, and then asks me why I don't have an armband, as if it was my responsibility to get one. She stops, and goes and gets me a band before continuing. At this point, I was pretty uneasy, so I just clenched my fist and looked away as she worked. Fortunately, she can do that part right.
She caps the vials of blood, and gathers up the waste. As she's walking over to the biohazard bin, she managed to spill some of my blood on the floor. Oops. She grabs a paper towel, wipes it up a bit, and tosses it in the bin. And misses. She starts walking back over to the table, stops, looks down, and exclaims "Oh, I stepped in it!" She throws another paper towel on the floor and wipes up the rest of the blood with her foot. She gathers the blood samples and leaves the room.
Another twenty minuts go by, and a different nurse comes in to the room. She asks me if anyone has drawn my blood yet. Uh...yes? Why don't you know this? She apologizes and leaves the room. Another ten minutes pass, and the doctor comes back. He tells me the blood work will take about an hour. At this point, I'm glad I remembered to charge my phone, because otherwise I'd be staring at a wall for an hour. The blood work comes back clean. The doctor gives me a prescription for an antibiotic, even though it was pretty clear I don't have a bacterial infection (I'm already on an antibiotic that's approved for treating bacterial conjunctivitis). I told him I wasn't going to fill it, and he didn't argue.
It's about 1:30 PM at this point, and I head back out to the waiting room. My roommate is still being examined, so I sit back down. There's a new crowd of people in the waiting room now, the most conspicuous being the woman lying face down on the floor, moaning. It looked and sounded like she was giving birth, but she was face down. Maybe that's how her mother birthed her. The personnel seem to be making an active effort to avoid paying attention to her, and I can't really blame them. I got the impression that she was a regular. Hypochondriac, junkie, or both.
A bit later, a man comes in wearing a white shirt drenched in blood and a towel pressed against his arm. He had been bitten by a stray dog, and it tore a chunk of flesh off his arm. They took him back right away, stopped the bleeding, and then sent him out into the waiting room. He was still waiting when we left about 45 minutes later. I hope for his sake that the dog wasn't diseased.
My favorite story comes from my roommate, though. He was taken to his exam room, and after a few minutes, an orderly comes in with a tray full of needles and other fun toys. He looks up at the orderly with a horrified expression, and the orderly asks "Wait, what's your name?" When he realizes he's in the wrong room, he apologizes and leaves.
Needless to say, I'll not be going back.
And in the meantime, I'm a vampire. |
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