Recently I spoke with my niece on an incident she had in a hospital. Her 90 year old mother-in-law was having extreme heart irregularities such that her doctor recommended she be taken immediately to a hospital emergency room. My niece complied.
After four and one half hours in the ER waiting room, with mother-in-law still experiencing some kind of heart trauma and visibly sinking physically as a result, a nurse finally appeared to "triage" waiting room patients. It was another couple of hours wait before mother-in-law finally got to see a doctor.
Because of the seriousness of her condition, the ER doctor recommended that in the future, rather than bring M-I-L to the hospital herself, my niece call an ambulance and have her transported to the hospital.
Had my niece only known this beforehand, she could have saved her very sick M-I-L some valuable life saving hours.
So should you ever find yourself in such a situtation and discover after arriving at the hospital ER the waiting room crowd resembles some middle age's painting of Black Death victims suffering and dying on the clinic floor before getting to see a doctor, you may just want to return to your car with your mother-in-law, use your cell phone to call an ambulance to transport her from the hospital parking lot to the ER! (Of course, the 100 yard ride over to the ER entrance will cost $500, but how do you put a price on a life at a time like that?)
I only mention this sad incident of American healthcare because I was reminded of it listening to Michael Moore this morning on "Democracy Now!" with Amy Goodman.
As Moore revealed, according to the World Health Organization, the United States ranks 37th among other nations in health care.
"We’re behind Costa Rica!" Moore revealed. But take heart fellow Americans. The U.S. at 37th, is ahead of number 38, Slovenia!
Dada says, "Be proud, America. Be very proud!"
6 comments:
This country sucks elephant and donkey balls. At the same time. That's a lot of ball-sucking.
Ah, gee pt, you're sounding a little angrier these days. And thanks for expressing it so graphically.
Just as with your Bay Area boldness in painting the freeways with brash reading material for zombied commuters, your vernacular here leads us into new and more entertaining ways of describing the American condition.
Others are sure to follow your lead! (Myself included.)
I'm thinking it might be a good title for an angry blog post.
I guess I'm lucky that I called an ambulance last January when I had my arrhythmia. I got attention immediately, but before they moved me to the cardiac ward, the nurse mentioned that they had people on gurneys in hallways - no rooms left.
But did you hear about the woman who died in an emergency room in southern California? She was writhing on the floor in pain and no one would help her so her husband called 911, but the dispatcher refused to send an ambulance because she was already in a hospital. She died there of a perforated bowel.
I'll take a wild guess that she was uninsured.
Nona: Geez, your description, "the nurse mentioned that they had people on gurneys in hallways - no rooms left," for me, conjured up the birth of Jesus, or 21st century Third World countries' health care.
What country were you inn when this took place? Serbia?
Heh heh. You're too funny, Dada.
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