We all have things that happen in our lives that have taken us to the emergency room. I am more dangerous in the emergency room than most people. I am easily bored and the personnel do leave you alone most of the time…If I could only go to sleep, everyone would be safe.
Unfortunately, that is never the case for me. There are way too many lights to snooze; too much activity to relax and most importantly, too many new toys to play with I don't have at home.
One of the funniest things in the ER is the gowns they use. Why are they cloth instead of the paper kind you get at the doctor’s office? Putting on the gown is a test and if you can figure out how to snap the shoulders and arms and tie it yourself (in the back), they will treat your illness. If not, well, you might be asked to leave. Why do they have a pocket looking opening on the right side at chest level? If they use the opening for monitoring the heart, wouldn’t it be easier to get the patient to put the gown on with the opening in the front and do away with the pocket?
Another thing I noticed is that if a guy says his pain level is a four, the nurses say that he is masking it well. If a woman says her pain level is four, the nurses wonder why she is in the ER. If you are a woman and say to the nurse that your pain level is at a ten, she pretends you didn’t say that and backs out of the room, slowly.
In my few hours visit in the ER, I found a variety of toys that are fun to play with. A bed that goes up and down; can be lifted and lowered in positions that would make anyone ill at some point. You have to wonder why a patient would ever need to be in some of those positions but I guess there are all types of illnesses.
In my small room, there were two hand sanitizers that never got used by anyone. I have to question why two were needed in a room that small and I have to say that the locations of them were not ergonomically correct.
The nurses do like to ask you if you are allergic to anything over and over again. Can someone remember this, please? You’re scaring me. Also, they print off an entire page of labels with your name on them, the date you came to visit but only use one or two of them. Why do they need an entire page of labels for anyone in the emergency room? Everything in the room had a label on it by the time I left. I even had my name on the door.
Oh, and I can’t leave out the exceedingly young person from the admitting office that comes to gather the $200 copay from you while you are in so much pain. They are way too perky for a collection agency.
When it came time for me to leave, the staff said they would never forget me. How great is that for people that see hundreds of folks every night? I was so touched! I wish I could remember their names but the drugs worked much too quickly.
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