Hospital Update: Don't Be Stupid

Nobody’s Opinion: Just when you think nothing in the world could surprise you---you’ve heard it all, you’ve seen it before, think again.

There is truly one thing that I am always shocked to find out has no bounds in my life, and that’s my own stupidity.

It seems I have an abundance of it.

My former preconceptions of human kind are forever having to be adjusted.

I can take cluelessness to a whole other dimension.

You might need some background on this. I'm clueless when it comes to hospitals.

Baby boomers are now taking care of their parents, and I was no exception. Both my parents had major strokes, and I spent a good part of my adult life in and out of hospitals…Stephen King had it right, they are bonifide nightmares.

If you have never spent any time there---don’t. Hospitals could kill you.

I thought I had seen it all, but this weekend, I must admit, it’s worse than I even thought.

You see, there is a very big hospital here…I won’t mention any names but, let’s just say it’s on the Top Ten list of the best hospitals in the United States.

So when my husband threw out his back last Monday morning, it was the logical choice to go there.

He got up out of bed at his usual time, and well, let’s just say---he didn’t make it off the sheets.

So, at four in the morning we painfully made it to the emergency room. Where happily, there were NO other patients there. GREAT…we thought.

This is more than good luck! I remember in the past waiting sometimes up to eight hours waiting for relief. Things were looking hopeful.

Actually, this should have been my FIRST clue not to go in.

So, I went in and found a wheel chair; got my husband in it, and when the attending nurses saw us come in the front door they looked at us as if we were there to book a wedding.

After they took our insurance card, we were reeled into a room, where we waited.

Of course, just our luck, they put us in one with no TV.

There were TONS of people walking around. But no one seemed to be doing anything but staring at their computers: playing solitaire for all I knew. We were outnumbered twenty to two.

If you looked at them, they never looked back, even though they KNEW you were looking at them.

After about an hour we saw a doctor, who gave him some heavy Rush Limbaugh pain pills.

But…no one ordered x-rays. None

Remember, we had no clue what was wrong.

I didn’t think anything of it, except that we were there four hours, for what? The hospital to collect money for use of a bed?

We could have gone to our doctor for drugs.

They should have paid us, for making them money...

Now, I SHOULD have known better because not to long ago I took my son to the same emergency ward, and we BEGGED them for at least an e-ray.

Nope. Nothing. Four hours. He was in pain for weeks before some doctor finally issued an MRI.

You see, it takes WEEKS to get into a specialist. Socialized medicine is already here.

And today we found out why no one looked at the probable cause of his pain.

After laying in bed (drugged up) for three days and knowing that he could only now take five steps instead of one, we went to our regular doctor who said:

“Well, why did you go there? That hospital can’t take care of back problems because they have no doctors in the emergency room to look at back problems. They have lots of people there, but no doctors. You would have gotten an e-ray at such and such a hospital. Next time, don’t go there, to another place. ”

Now, you would THINK in an emergency room, any emergency room in a major city there would be a FRIGGING doctor to take a back e-ray!

Hospitals are run just like our Congress...there are no experts. It’s all smoke and mirrors. I swear, half of the staff are idiots.

Oh, you have some great doctors, but they are as rare as a banana in your pea soup.

They just don’t hang around the hospitals, they are somewhere in Africa I suppose.

And here’s another fact I learned from my many years in Hospitals….at least here in St. Louis….there are no doctors in hospitals on the weekend.

If you are going to get sick, DO not, I repeat, DO NOT have a car accident on Saturday or Sunday.

Your chances of survival just got cut down to zero. (unless of course you are a terrorist then you will get in before your victims)

I know. I once went room to room on all fifteen floors in a major hospital searching for one. The nurses tell you, "Well... we just call them if it’s necessary.”

By the time the doc gets there, you will be dead.

And that’s the point.

Either there is a BIG shortage of doctors in this country, or the plan is to let us all die.

Cheerfully drugged by staff hospital nurses, who will NEVER tell you, oh by the way, “We can not tell you what is wrong with you, who knows? It’s not OUR problem. Here take these, it will ease your pain on the way to heaven.”

So, now, I have to call up every hospital in the area, and find out just EXACTLY what trauma they CAN treat, since evidently they are all different.

I suggest you do the same.

And I thought I knew how bad it was…just when you think you know…

Nobody’s Perfect: Okay, maybe I’m being a little too rough on myself. Still, somewhere in my background I remember when you went to a hospital, you could actually, find out rather quickly what was wrong.

Shouldn't we at least expect service?

I never saw ER, but it seems from my observations spent in many an emergency room, the only people that get treated in the ER are gang related gun-shot wounds. You could be having a heart attack, or stroke right there in the ER, and the gun-shot drug dealer would take precedent.

Nobody Knows; Why they don’t tell you this stuff at the door.

They also don't tell you that no matter HOW fast the medics get to your door when you are having a stroke or heart attack, it might take hours to find an emergency room that will take you.

Nobody Cares; That’s my point.