FRUSTRATED and I need to vent, this is as good a place as any...

Uggggggh. That seems to be the only word my brain can form at this point.  This past week has sucked.  On so many levels, and in so many ways.  Trust me when I say, other peoples weeks have been far worse, I understand that.  But this is what I have to deal with right now and it’s a lot.

Between being in the ER last week with my mother, at my wit’s end with my father, and the ER again with my sister, I wouldn’t mind finding a little retreat, and taking it. 

Collectively, 12 entire hours were spent in an ER.  I am not sure when the ER became the DMV, but it did.  Apparently no one likes their jobs there and all they want to talk about is when they get to go home.  

Perhaps it is me, but if I start with a patient, I will tell them when my shift ends and that someone else is taking over.  Maybe its state law, that you just leave and not tell the patient what is going on.  Instead, we started with one group and ended with another.  And somehow between the two shift changes, everything you told the previous group, gets lost in translation.

I cannot complain about my ER appearance when I broke my leg.  I believe when you come in via an ambulance and you are screaming your bloody head off, they tend to get to you faster so they can get you to shut the hell up.  Maybe I was lucky.  Maybe I just happened to have the crème de la crème of staff that night, but I cannot say enough nice things about all of the staff that had to tend to me.  I feel bad for them, but they were empathetic and did their jobs.  In the two times in the past week that I had to be back in the same said ER, I did not see a single one of those people except one of the Dr.’s. 

This is what I know.  I applaud OSF for their assistance, charity, for those of us without insurance.  I personally have drastically depended on it.  In this past week though, I have taken 2 different people in, one who has the assistance, one who has insurance.  Service did not differ.  In fact it was completely shitty both times.  And somehow you are supposed to remember your insurance card when someone stops breathing? Trust me I would not want that job, but there has to be a different way some of these things can get done.  How about, has anything changed since the last time she was seen?  No?  Ok, good, good luck, I hope she is ok.  I am not even going to go there.  But I am pretty sure I have never seen David push someone across the room with his eyes, like I did at that moment.  Anyway.  I sat in the ER with my mom for an hour and half BEFORE she ever got back into the ER…before she was ever seen, we were told she was having a reaction to a medicine she has taken for years.  And then when that wasn’t the answer, we were told she must have taken someone else’s medicine.  And when that didn’t show up, we were told she was experiencing a stressful situation that caused her arms and legs to flail and contort and twist.  She won’t be going back.  (And she is ok now, for now.)

My Sister did come in via an ambulance though and was seen for 5 minutes TOTAL by a doctor.  A doctor who saw her 3 hours after she arrived, who didn’t even have the correct information.  I do not blame him, there are other people there that should get that information for him.  She did have a CAT Scan and an X-ray of her stomach (?), though they were told she was having a terrible headache and dry heaves, fairly quickly after we got there.  When we would ask questions, we were received very poorly and an attitude was taken in which we were never checked on again.  I think had David not still been in shock, he would have picked her up and removed her himself and taken her to Peoria.  At this point we didn’t know what to do.  4-5 hours later, it was news to them that she had stopped breathing.  She was given 2 doses of something to help her stop having dry heaves, but nobody cared about why she was having them.  She was never ONCE put on oxygen; she was barely given a bag of fluids.  It was not until half way through that bag of fluids that she actually regained color and/or made any sense.  They were told on more than one occasion she remembered nothing, but continued to ask her interpretation of what happened?  Yes, please ask someone who stopped breathing to recount their view of the events.  No one cared that her heart stopped.  No one cared that David told them her body went into convulsions and that her mouth was foaming.  No one cared that David repeatedly told them he didn’t believe she hit her head at all.  It was like a bad dream and do I think we should have moved her immediately to Peoria, yes, but I think we were all so scared we didn’t know what to do.  It’s easy to say we should have done this…or that. 

This is what I know.  It doesn’t matter what kind of insurance you have or don’t have, I believe, and someone will correct me if I am wrong, that the entire ER staff, still gets paid for their hours worked.  No matter what.  In the same exact week, at the same exact place I watched a person not only get diagnosed before she was even examined, but I watched another person who stopped breathing get less than adequate attention from a staff of people who yes, may have been understaffed, but when we arrived the place was not full.  If the Dr. on call was less than concerned it was because he didn’t have a clue why she was there, he thought she fell in the shower.  I am sorry, but this doesn’t set well with me.  On any level.  For any reason.

No matter what happens to me, I try to put myself in someone else’s shoes.  If that was their mother or sister, do you think they would find that acceptable, no I doubt it?  Human compassion goes a long way with me.  A long damn way.  And I experienced none of it there.  Bits of it from the Dr…once he knew the damn story. 

I am done venting.  But I am not done telling my story.  I don’t care who it offends or who it upsets.  I watched two people I care about more than my own life, suffering, and that isn’t going to happen again.

Hell hath no fury, like Tiffany scorned.