You can count my visits to the emergency room on one hand. Literally. There have been exactly five—three of which were due to chest pain. All three of those turned out to be false alarms, but when it comes to chest pain, they say you can never be too careful.
The latest false alarm was Tuesday night. I started experiencing the pain just as I was about to go to sleep, and it steadily got worse. Loretta drove me to the hospital. By the time we arrived at the ER the pain was gone, but I figured I should probably get checked out anyway.
The ER was busy, but when it comes to chest pain, they don't mess around. Within the first half hour, they had taken an EKG, chest x-ray, and several vials of my blood. After that I spent about a half hour in the waiting room before the doctor told me that everything looked good, but that they would have to do another EKG and blood work in a couple of hours. He said they would put me in a bed as soon as one was available. I sent Loretta home and told her I would call when I was done. I regretted not bringing my Kindle, but as it turned out, there was no shortage of entertainment. I now know why so many movies and television shows are set in hospitals, and especially in emergency rooms.
The majority of the patients were children, all accompanied by exhausted-looking mothers. One mother fretted to her husband on the phone over how they would be able to afford the copay. Another wondered how she would have the energy to go to work in the morning. Her son, Coby, seemed like a happy, normal child; it was hard to believe he was sick. But I overheard Coby's mother tell a nurse that he had EoE and had been vomiting all day. I had never heard of EoE, so I used my phone to Google it:
Eosinophilic (e-o-sin-o-FILL-ik) esophagitis (EoE) is a recognized chronic allergic/immune condition of the esophagus.The doctor had given Coby anti-nausea medication, and he seemed to be fine now. He chattered away non-stop to his mother and, at one point, to his father on the phone. About all I could understand were the words "Mommy" and "Daddy," until he loudly and proudly announced, “I have to poop.”
When they finally got me into a bed surrounded by a curtain, I could still hear everything going on around me. In the bed next to mine, a succession of nurses unsuccessfully attempted to insert a catheter into a man's—well, you know: "This time we’ll try the smallest one we have, and first we'll numb you with lidocaine. It's the same stuff your dentist uses.” (I bet he never used it there.) I cringed every time I heard the man yelp in pain. On the other side, a woman who thought she might have swallowed too many pills was being asked if she had ever had thoughts of suicide. Across the room, someone's groans called to mind Disney's Haunted Mansion.
Later, I heard the friendly young tech who had just administered my second EKG being reprimanded by his supervisor: “You take too much time, and you’re too familiar with the patients. It took you twelve minutes to put on that knee immobilizer. That’s much too long. And when the patient said his leg was too short, you said something about other parts being longer. You can’t say things like that.”
But the main event of the evening occurred while I was still in the waiting room. Just outside the door, in the hallway, we could hear sheriff's deputies talking to a man who was under arrest. "Why?" he complained. "I didn't do anything. My brother's the violent one. He punched me in the nose. You should be arresting him, not a seventy-one year-old with a heart condition. This is the worst day of my life!”
The deputies patiently explained, again and again, that he had to come with them to jail. After several minutes of this, the prisoner cursed under his breath. There were sounds of a scuffle, followed by the prisoner crying out in pain and shouting, "You broke my arm!"
"You're lucky I didn't knock your teeth out," the deputy growled. "What were you thinking, grabbing for my gun? Were you planning to shoot me or yourself?"
"I just wanted to end it all," the prisoner whined.
A few minutes later, I saw the deputies march him past the door in handcuffs: a dejected, disheveled old man, half the size of the deputy he had attacked. A doctor accompanied them, to examine his "broken arm." I never saw them again, so I don't know if the arm was truly broken. I suspected he was faking it, until I later overheard a witness tell another deputy that during the scuffle he had heard a "pop."
As I said, my chest pain turned out to be a false alarm. It was probably a muscle spasm—either that, or gas. It was nearly 3:00 AM when the doctor released me. I didn't want to disturb Loretta, so I asked the receptionist to call me an Uber. She called, but she told me it would be a while before one was available. A man sitting next to me in the reception area kindly offered to take me home. I politely refused his offer, but he pointed out that I was unlikely to get an Uber at that hour, and that for him it was better than just sitting there, waiting to hear about his mother, who had suffered a stroke. So I took him up on his offer.
An exciting night, and through all the drama, the staff maintained their composure, compassion, and professionalism. As far as I know they only lost one patient: that woman who took too many pills.
She didn't die—at least not that I know of. She just wandered off. They were still looking for her when I left.
