The Great Equalizer
Emergency room
We were there because John's doctor, who worked out of the hospital, was on vacation.
In the middle of the crowded room sat a man, aged from physical work from the looks of it, casually dressed with a gray fishing hat on his balding head. He was a man who could not stop talking. Sometimes he talked to people in the room; sometimes into his mobile. Like a skillful fly fisherman, he threw his opinions out into the room, gently tugging with expressions and repetitive language to catch a response from someone. A few listened, then, recognizing that they had bit the hook mistakenly, spit it out and moved away, upstream into the hall. John and I didn't bite as we sat in the crowd, waiting to see a doctor like the rest of our ER companions. We endured the pontificating and chastising as did the others. Even the security guard who signed us in and the staff helping people move to the lab seemed oblivious to the man's continuing disruption. I surmised that his behavior must not be uncommon for the circumstances we found ourselves in. He didn't get violent so they let him be.
I caught the eye of a quiet, demure woman who sat down next to us about three hours into our wait. She told me of her mild stroke and that an ambulance had brought her here and not to a hospital closer to her home. She had come to this emergency department on purpose - to be seen by good doctors at this good hospital. She seemed remarkably calm to all that was going on in the room. After a bit, our conversation turned to the man in the center of the room. We agreed that his talking was getting on our nerves even though everyone else seemed to tolerate it, sitting quietly, well almost quietly, waiting for their turn. His manner and tone gave me doubts about his mental stability. But this brave woman was undeterred. She walked over to him, sat down and asked him, ever so kindly, if he could speak more softly. At the top of his voice, he lashed out at her, "You don't tell me how I can talk! Don't nobody can tell me how to talk!" He then returned to his mobile, launching into a loud conversation about the gall of "some woman to tell him what to do." Unsuccessful, but with dignity, she returned to her chair, picked up her bag and walked up the hall to get a bit of peace.
After seven hours in the waiting room, it was another four hours before we left the emergency department at 2:30 AM with the knowledge that John would be okay if he stuck close to home, did no lifting or straining, nor long walks and met with a surgeon as soon as possible. His CAT scanned defined hernia was not going to rupture. The anxiety of not knowing evaporated and we were relieved.
After arriving home, exhausted and hungry, we concluded how lucky we are. How horrific it must be when you're ill and you've learned from experience that your only chance for care is through an emergency department when your local clinic is closed or doesn't exist. Not having health insurance nor being able to find a doctor who'll accept Medicaid is daunting. Insurance or not, we had to sit and wait with everyone else with non-life threatening sprained ankles, bleeding scrapes, upset guts, flues, and such.
If you've never been to a city emergency department, you might not realize that these doctors and staff are constantly bombarded by the life threatening chaos of ambulance sirens, gunshot wounds, addiction withdrawal and heart attacks. You see emergency department docs and nurses saving lives on TV, but you don't see those who wait until the chaos subsides. What we experienced reminds me of MASH where Hawkeye walks between the wounded soldiers making decisions about who will receive immediate care, because if they don't get it immediately they will die, and those who will live and can wait. John would live so we waited, but not in the quiet of a suburban ER filled with soft new age music, but in the havoc of city life.
It didn't matter that we have great insurance. In the emergency department, insurance doesn't count. Dare I say, I agree? Everyone deserves to be treated fairly and there is nothing more equalizing than a city emergency room.