Four Reasons to Spend the Entire Weekend in the Emergency Room
I mean, besides the obvious
Yes, I was in the ER last weekend from Friday night to late Sunday afternoon.
It all started when I got overheated and could not cool off. Not even with a cool shower. When wave after wave of hot flushes washed over me with no relief, I called the advice nurse. She got the doctor on the line. He said, given my age and other factors, I should come right in.
So I did. And in those long hours had a chance to reflect on what might be the benefit of being there. Besides the obvious. With great pleasure, I share them with you.
You’re a compulsive overeater having a hard time dieting.
Go to the ER. Hours will pass while they do test after test, hooking you up to monitors, wheeling you off to X-ray and nuclear medicine and the lab, you won’t have time to eat.
If you dare so much as ask, they will roll their eyes and explain that you might have to be whisked to surgery at any moment. So it’s NPO–Nona para orifice–for you, Sweetheart till they find out what the bleed is wrong with you.
Then you’ll have to ask over and over again. Because, hey, they’re f-ing busy, and feeding your face is not their number one priority. Saving lives is.
Not only that, but once you finally get your tray, nothing is edible. The salad started as a bastion of health, four days ago. Now drowning it in Lite Ranch won’t even help. It’s given up the ghost on your watch. RIP, dear salad. Better you than me.
Now you get brave–or are just famished–and stab your fork into the mashed potatoes. Which tastes like the cardboard on the box they came in. You move onto the unidentifiable piece de meat out of sheer desperation. And immediately regret it. Breakfast lunch and dinner consist of one slightly hard roll, swathed in fake butter.
But hey, it could be so much worse.
By the time the weekend’s over you’ve lost five pounds. Without breaking a sweat, Hallelujah!
You have a Medium habit you can’t break any other way.
So you go cold turkey to the ER makeshift DIY rehab center. Without your laptop, tablet, iPad, or phone charger cord. While you could try using your cell phone, you need to save the juice for your ride home–whenever that might be.
By Sunday morning, you give up trying to predict and settle for watching whatever channel is on their limited access TV screen you’re too weak and tired to figure out how to control.
Not to worry, with all the constant interruptions, and your brain fog, you won’t be able to follow a storyline anyway. And any channel worth watching, they don’t have. So you ask for pen and paper and make lists of stories you might write when you get home and feel up to it. Like Four Reasons to Spend the Entire Weekend in the Emergency Room.
You need to get away from that creepy guy who’s been stalking you.
He knows where you live, where you work where you hang out. Which Pete’s or Starbucks. Which Trader Joe’s. Where you buy your gas, even though you’ve switched all of these countless times. He always seems to show up. Ugh!
But he’d never think to look for you in the ER.
And, thanks to COVID, if he did, they wouldn’t let him in. So free at last! Thank God almighty, you’re free at last! A whole 47 hours without having to see his face, duck and dodge his bod, or burn the notes he leaves on your car.
Your life was boring and you wanted to shake things up.
There’s never a dull moment in the ER. Or a quiet one.
When you finally get into a room, hooked up to monitors with a bazillion cords from it to intimate places on your torso, and you’re thinking to catch a few zzz’s cause its 3:47 am, that’s when it starts.
That baby that was sleeping so sweetly in its mommy’s arms?
Shrieking like it’s being tortured. Which in its mind, may well be. Or at least poked, stabbed, and invaded in all the ways you’ve been. Or more. After all, they did not stick a thermometer up your butt.
Now if the wailing would just settle into a pattern, it could dissolve into white noise.
But no. It’s on and again off in irregular rhythms. The kind you hope your heart doesn’t have. So just when you’re almost in slumber land, wham! There they go again. You say a prayer for the poor dear because as hard as this is for you, you at least understand why these things are happening. Or maybe you don’t ‘cause they’re still testing.
But you get a general idea.
Way better than a four-month-old. You say another prayer for the baby’s mom. She has to be exhausted. And maybe she’s the patient on top of being the mom. So again, it could be a lot worse.
By morning, your curiosity’s satiated. Your boredom’s relieved.
But they’re still waiting for test results and a nuclear med tech so you can have that stress test they promised. I’m already stressed you protest, Just read my vitals and you’ll see.
But no, it has to be done their way, with their scanner, in the before and after mode. Before and after what, you ask? Afraid of the answer. But they’re cagy. Five minutes of simulated extreme exercise. Which really means five minutes of hell. But they don’t say that then. So you won’t get too stressed out I guess.
No, they let the doctor who gives you the test tell you, holding your hand and injecting the dastardly drugs at the same time like a two-faced torturer. He apologizes when your blood pressure tanks, lowering your head and elevating your feet. It’s usually not this bad he says. Which doesn’t help. All you want to do is get off the ride asap.
But you can’t til your pressure stabilizes. So you wait and drink Chocolate Boost which helps.
Not soon enough, you’re back in your room, waiting for the results.
If you pass the test and there are no blockages, you can go home. If you flunk the test, you’ll be admitted to a floor for whatever’s next.
You start praying to all the Gods whose names you can remember, and then some.
It works, you passed the test. No blockages. No heart attack. No blood clots. Hooray!
But what exactly did happen? After all, this place isn’t exactly free.
But you have Kaiser Medicare Senior Advantage so you won’t’ see a bill. Unlike had you been at a rehab or an amusement park.
This is the Emergency Room they explain. Our job is to save lives. Period.
They didn’t say period but you felt it. And were so grateful you thanked and praised them profusely.
’Cause you know it could have been a whole lot worse.
Marilyn Flower writes humor to laugh the changes she wants to see and make. She’s the author of Creative Blogging: Ninja Writers Guide to Character Development and Bucket Listers, Get Your Brave On. Clowning and improvisation strengthen her resolve during these crazy times. Stay in touch!