Back to the USSR (Oops, ER)

    Well a week later I found that I missed the friendly atmosphere of our local hospital ER and George and I decided, well, actually, I decided that I needed to go back. A wonderfully itchy rash had spread on my chest, my arms and on my back. I had gone to get some meds for it at an urgent care clinic but it was moving toward my neck and ears and that was spooking me. So we went back to see if I had picked some nasty Jeanne-killing virus, or if it was just an allergy reaction. Unfortunately we got there at a busy time.

   

No one I saw looked smiling. And their hair looked like crap. Mine included.

A rash that looked like mine 'cept mine was better.

The room was packed with people in various states of distress. One man carried one of those barf condoms I talked about in my last blog. We stayed away from him. Two babies and a teen ager came in with horrible coughs. The boy got masked up right away. We stayed away from him too.

We arrived at 8:30 pm and I was called into Triage to see if I had a life threating condition that would make me die in the waiting room. I tried to think of something. "Any pain? No, just extreme itching."
"Are you having trouble breathing?" Only when I start to panic. Does that count?"

I thought I saw some concern in her face and reported to George. "I'm a shoe-in. They don't want me to freak out here in front of all these suffering souls. I got out my cell phone and played Angry Birds. Eventually the angry birds were run down by dead batteries and the angry birds just tweeted to the ground.

At 11:30 PM we are still waiting. There were several pathetic looking people wrapped in blankets. But there were people coming out the exits, 2 broken arms, 1 broken leg, stitches above the eye. The room was emptying and we were still there.

George tried to be positive. "It's almost empty." He said.
"Yeah its empty, " I said. "they're all in there!" I pointed to the innermost sanctum of the Er.

For 2 more hours we endured the hyena-like laughing of the three people sitting next to us. Evidently they felt the whole world was funny, and they guffawed throughout all of the Late Show, which I was at least trying to watch.

At last we are in. We get a doctor that does not have the most awe-inspiring appearance but seems nice. He looks like a kid, for God's sake. Anyway he says there are 2 kinds of rashes, kinds that kill you and kinds that annoy you. He THINKS I Don't have the kind that kills people. Yay!

You know what is funny/ WE are there 6 hours, he tells me to stay on the same meds I am already on and to see how the rash does. The next day it starts to get better. SO I figure it was a bargain. Where else can you go on a Tuesday night for 6 hours, (with a 100.00 co-payment) watch TV and relax. The people watching alone was a show. ANd the rash started to improve the next morning. (We threatened it with the ER though.

I admit it was nice that they remembered me there. It might have been that incident when the nurse came in and I was bending over to pick up something, butt totally exposed in my untied gown which was practically falling off. It wasn't a pretty picture.

The Jeanne Kraus Wing