It's Called a Hospital, Not a Hospitable

This past Tuesday night I woke up at like 4am and thought I was literally freezing to death. My temperature was 94.5 and I was fully dressed lying under 3 blankets with two hot water bottles, shivering so hard my teeth were chattering. I was pretty sure I had the flu, but I had never felt anything like this and I was lying there in my bed thinking, "If I die tonight, I'm going to be one of those cautionary tales they tell to scare kids in health class."

I also remembered when I was in high school, there was a dude in my church who up and died from spinal meningitis. He thought he had the flu, got up to go to the bathroom, and fell on the floor dead.

I also thought I read somewhere (or created in my delirium) the fact that if your body temperature gets too low for too long your testicles shrivel up and you can never make babies (also your pee comes out for the rest of your life in a fine mist).

All of these thoughts led me to the emergency room. Kate (who is perfect) hailed a cab and took me to St. Vincents. There was no one in the waiting room - no one. There was a security guard in the doorway, and he had to actually find someone to help us.

When the triage nurse finally came out front to deal with us, she had all the warmth and charm of a Denny's waitress who you just asked to take your eggs back because you asked for scrambled and the eggs she gave you are sunny-side up. So immediately I felt stupid for being there (stupid but horribly sick).

She made me sit in a hallway while she talked to the attending physician about me (in a horribly sarcastic tone, I'm sure - "Asshole wants his eggs scrambled!). There wasn't a lot going on, but in the room directly across from where we were sitting, there was a doctor with a patient. We couldn't see into the room, but we could hear them.

DOCTOR: Do you want me to fix the huge gash on your face?

DRUNK CREEPY MAN: *whimper*

DOCTOR: Don't cry. Don't cry. Sir...don't cry.

DCM: *crying*

DOCTOR: Okay, I'm going to suture your wound.

DCM: *more crying*

DOCTOR: You have to hold still.

DCM: *tussling*

DOCTOR: (angrily) Stop moving or I'm going to hurt you.

So I was ready to leave. But then I had the overwhelming sensation that I was going to throw up. Kate (still perfect) asked where I might find a toilet to vomit within, and I shuffled towards it. Luckily it was a single, so I stood over it and dry heaved three times until my body suddenly switched directions and signaled it was time to shit.

By the time I got back to my seat, the DCM was getting a tetanus shot (knife fight?) and the doctor was ready to see me. Well, not the doctor - a doctoral student. Clearly my shivering was not worthy of an actual doctor's attention.

The doctoral student was also bored to tears by my story of woe ("Maybe you should just eat the eggs we gave you."), and after about 30 seconds of staring at me, her bottom lip poking out in a mock pouty face, she told me, "You're a strong boy, go home and sleep it off."

Then she left me to go laugh with the triage nurse about what a pussy I am. About that time, an asian guy in a purple hospital gown wandered by. A few minutes later, an orderly came over and said to no one in particular (certainly not to me), "Oh shit, where'd he go?"

Then a guy, who I think might have been the janitor, came over with a broom and said, "Whoa! That asian guy's gone!"

I suddenly started worrying that even though I dragged Kate (wonderfully perfect) out of bed in the middle of the night to the emergency room, we had somehow entered the most incompetent emergency room on the planet and I was still going to end up a cautionary tale ("Distracted by a bleeding creepy guy and a wandering asian, the staff of this emergency room somehow overlooked the rapid onset of both spinal bifida and Aarskog syndrome in a patient complaining of chills, nausea, and sudden explosive defecation. They sent him home...to die.")

The asian returned under his own sock-footed power at which point the orderly and the bitchy triage nurse had this exchange:

ORDERLY: Who is this guy anyway?

BITCHY NURSE: He's got a hat with his ID in it.

ORDERLY: Oh right, I threw that in the trash.

How did he put his ID in a hat? The doctoral student returned, gave me a prescription for some flu medicine and said, "I'm giving you a prescription because we're all pretty sure you're a huge pussy, so if you want to regain any dignity at all, I suggest throwing this prescription in the trash and toughing it out like a real man."

So I went home, buried myself under my blankets in my clothes and laid there until I developed an actual fever of about 101 and sweat through it all. Then I sat at home for two days and toughed it out...like a real man.

Lesson learned: I will never volunatrily go to the ER again. If I ever go back there, I will be gushing blood, unconscious, already dead, or shitting water.

Oh, and I hope I breathed on that triage nurse and doctoral student just enough to get them both sick as fuck.

Posted by Anthony King at December 10, 2004 02:58 PM