×
×
homepage logo
LOGIN
SUBSCRIBE

Timing is everything when it comes to a hospital visit

By Mike Morin - For The Telegraph | May 9, 2020

Staff photo by Kevin Jacobus^^Mike Morin, 7/19/2005.

These days, you’re taking a chance when you begin an email or text with the following polite greeting, “I hope this finds you and your family well.” I opened up an email that said just that, but for once, it was not the case.

I had just returned home from the hospital following a non-COVID19 related emergency room visit and an overnight stay. But I didn’t have a choice. I had excruciating abdominal pain following dinner and hit the emergency room first thing the next morning.

Now, I’ve been to ERs many times with others and typically they’re a madhouse. I Figured I’d be in for a long wait. I was wrong. There were maybe five patients widely scattered about the waiting room, models for social distancing. I was triaged quickly and given a luxury emergency room bay, complete with blue patterned curtains and a non-stop parade of medical people walking by.

“Is it always this slow?” I asked the triage nurse. She explained it is often more frantic but she also thinks the pandemic is chasing people away from an ER visit. In my case, there was no choice. Other than a tonsillectomy and getting whacked on the head by a baseball bat, this is my only visit to a hospital as a patient. Really? I had to pick this week to come up with a case of pancreatitis?

After five hours, I was moved to a non-COVID floor. That’s where I’d live while tests were given. The first was an ultrasound. Apparently it proved non-conclusive in a search for the pancreas pain. Next, I was given two 16-ounce bottles of Breeza, a gelatinous fluid that creates contrast during a CT scan, so the doctor can read it as it offers greater detail.

Everyone told me it was better than the drinks you consume the day before a colonoscopy. They would be wrong, though there is no close bonding with a toilet for the CT scan as there is for the other. And they would wait for me to drink it all. I suggested there would be no one here to operate the machine by the time I had it all. I was informed someone is always on the CT scan patrol. I literally took about 4 hours to croak it down. Not that it tasted bad but because I felt bloated, which is what they were going for.

After a thoroughly restless night, I was told the best way to get the Breeza lump out of my stomach was to walk around to “get things moving” again. So, I grabbed my fluid drip bag on a stick and walked the hallways. I spotted a soda vending machine and searched in vain for a Sprite drip bag to swap out for the nutritional water being fed to my veins.

Finally, the biggest shock of my visit: No less than three doctors, yes doctors, offered their hands for a shake.

“All I got today is an elbow, doc. Nothing personal.”

Newsletter

Join thousands already receiving our daily newsletter.

Interests
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *