Ambulance Driver Files A Day in the Life | Kelly Grayson
Have you gargled glass before? I mean, so you can make an accurate comparison?
I fix a concerned smile on my face and nod to her to continue. She doesn’t need the encouragement.
“…and this horrible sinus headache that makes my entire face feel like it’s going to detach from my skull…and a fever…and I’ve been coughing up this awful yellow stuff streaked with blood…”
I listen to her chest as her litany of complaints continues like a sentence from a Faulkner novel – lots of pauses, exposition and comma splices, with no fucking end in sight. Her lungs sound clear, and her temperature is a whopping 98.6 degrees. I look sicker than she does. No comments from the peanut gallery, please.
“…and did I mention fever? I’ve been running a fever, too. I get these aches and chills…”
No doubt measured by the precisely calibrated back of your hand, Scarlet O’Hara.
“Have you taken any Tylenol or Motrin for the fever?”
“No. I figured I was coming down with that virus that’s been going around and thought I should come right in and get treated.”
Of course you did. Now just have a seat in the waiting room with the other twelve people who have yet to discover that medical science knows how to cure exactly zero viruses. Perhaps a couple of hours of Tincture of Time and Fluorescent Light Therapy will cure what ails ya’. Meanwhile, I’ll snap a few pics so you’ll have a keepsake photo of the $500 Tylenol we’ll give you. You can frame it and put it on the knick knack shelf next to the Dale Earnhardt commemorative plate.
“We’ll get to you as soon as we can, Ma’am. Right now every room is full and we have a number of people ahead of you in the waiting room. Have a seat out there and we’ll call you back to a room as soon as one is available.”
“Wait! That’s not all that’s wrong with me! I’ve been vomiting too! And diarrhea!”
I try to suppress the facial tic that appears in the vicinity of my left eyebrow. I sigh and pick up my pen again.
“How many episodes, and since when?”
“Since yesterday. Maybe three or four times. And my chest hurts, too.”
“How about vaginal discharge? Hearing voices telling you to do bad things?”
“Excuse me?”
Oops, did I say that out loud?
“I said ‘discharging you would be a bad thing’. Tell me more about this chest pain.”
“Well, it comes and goes…it’s really hard to describe…”
“Look at this chart. If a “10” describes the worst pain you have ever experienced, how does your current pain compare?”
“A ten, definitely.”
I barely suppress the urge to write bullshit in her chart.
Sure your pain is a 10. You’re sitting there calmly with nary a tear or fidget, with a heart rate of 68 and a blood pressure of 120/70, and no fever. Your vital signs are better than mine.
I point her to the waiting room, get up and carry her chart to the nurse’s station.
“And tell the doctor I get really weak and dizzy, too!” she bellows after me.
“What’s wrong with her?” the doctor asks me. I take a deeeeep breath…
“Feveracheschillsmalaiseproductivecoughwithbloodyyellowsputum…
*deep breath*
…runnynosesorethroatvomitingdiarrheaweakanddizzyallover. With chest pain. And a normal temperature, clear lungs, and normal vital signs.”
He rolls his eyes. “She sounds deathly ill. Put her in the waiting room with all the other people with colds.”
“Way ahead of you, Doc.”
__________________________________________________
“You only get one stick,” the woman tells me imperiously. “I didn’t bring my son in here to be poked with a million needles.”
At the mention of the word ‘needles,’ the four year old who had been calmly sitting on her lap starts screaming like a banshee and tries to climb her like a tree. I shoot the mother a dirty look. I’ve told her not to mention the IV until I’m ready to stick him, and I haven’t even set up my line yet.
Thanks for all the assistance, Ma’am. So much for sticking a relatively calm kid. Now he can build up the fear in his mind for the next four minutes.
I stick my head out the treatment room door and call for assistance. Presently the clerk appears. I pry the child away from his mother and lay him down on the bed. He slaps me and calls me a “fucking bastard.” A four year old child. The mother acts like she hasn’t heard a thing.
“Hold the little angel down, Patrick. Lay your body across him and give me his right arm.”
I manage to insert a 20 gauge in his right arm, draw blood and secure the kid’s arm to an arm board before we let him up. The kid calls me things that aren’t fit to print in a blog. Not even this blog, and my profanity filter is set permanently on LOW. The mother ignores his language and behavior and instead chooses to berate us for being so rough. She shuts up when she sees her funeral in my eyes.
I’m so sorry, Damien. Please ask Satan your father not to smite me. I had no choice.
“So what do you think is wrong with him?”
“Aside from the 104 degree fever, pneumonia and dehydration? Chronic Hickory Deficiency. But that’s usually treated in the home.”
From the look on her face, I probably shouldn’t have said that out loud, either.
__________________________________________________
“What, he’s back?” the nurse asks incredulously. “We discharged him only a couple of hours ago!” The clerk just shrugs helplessly.
“He says he isn’t any better, and what we gave him isn’t working.”
The nurse and doctor look at me with a silent plea in their eyes. I toss the chart I’ve been working on back onto the “unfinished” pile, pick up my stethoscope, pen and a blank chart.
“I’ll handle him. If I piss him off, you guys promise to back me up?” They nod eagerly, willing to agree to anything. I find the guy with his head on the clerk’s desk. If I hadn’t seen labs, vital signs and radiology films that were perfectly normal, he’d look pitiful. But I know better. He wants an excuse for work for the next three days, a thing he’s hinted at several times.
“I’m sick,” he groans. “I’m still vomiting, and my body aches all over. That stuff didn’t help me a bit.”
“That’s because it’s an antibiotic, Sir. It’s not going to make you feel better right away.”
Actually, it’s not going to make you feel better at all. That’s because it’s an antibiotic, and you have a viral gastroenteritis. But you didn’t want to hear ‘it’s just a virus, drink plenty of fluids and wait for it to pass’ did you? You wanted some MEDICINE.
“Well, why am I still vomiting? I’ve been vomiting for eight hours straight!”
You spent three hours in here with nary a gag or retch. In fact, we watched you on camera while you ate Doritos, drank Dr. Pepper, laughed and joked around with your girlfriend. You want sympathy, look between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.
“I don’t know, Sir. The IV Zofran seemed to work while you were in here.”
“I need to be in the hospital, but you bastards won’t admit me. And that Goddamned doctor only wrote me a work excuse for 24 hours!”
“That’s an issue you can take up with your primary care physician, Sir. If you’re still sick after 24 hours, that is
.”
“I don’t have a regular doctor!” he snaps.
“Well, why the hell not?” I snarl. “You have insurance, and you’re in here three times a month for sniffles and work excuses. I’ve given you contact information for the local doctors no less than three times myself, and I’m not the only person to have told you that what you come here for is not appropriate for an ER visit. So you can either man up and go to work, or take some responsibility for your health care and find a regular doctor. As for right now, you can have a seat in the waiting room behind the dozen people that are sicker than you and have yet to be seen, and we’ll get to you when we can.”
“And when will that be?”
“I have no idea. But the wait time for a table is a factor in choosing a restaurant, not emergency care. If waiting time is your primary concern, you’re probably not sick enough to be in an ER. I only wish I could ask you to have a seat in the IV bar and we’ll page you when we have an available table, but the architect still hasn’t finished the design. The waiting room will have to do until then.”
“You’re not going to give me something for my nausea?” he whines.
*sigh*
“If it will get you out of here immediately, I’ll ask the doctor to prescribe a Phenergan suppository. Since you say you’re vomiting, we can’t give you pills, and we took out your IV two hours ago. And it was questionable whether you needed it then.”
“A suppository? That’s one of those-“
“Big white pill,” I confirm, holding up my thumb for a size comparison. “Shoved in your ass. By me.”
When I checked the waiting room an hour later, he was gone.