My distrust of hospital emergency rooms and hatred for same began when I was 9 years old. My father was in severe pain and throwing up so violently he woke the whole house. My mother insisted on taking him to the hospital and he agreed without argument. This was a man who never, ever wanted to go to the doctor unless absolutely necessary, so we were all worried.
When we pulled up in front of the emergency room, my father got out and instructed my mom to stay in the car with me and my sister, who was 12 at the time. She didn't want to but he insisted it was probably nothing and he didn't want to drag us all inside. My mother gave in and we sat in the car for all of 10 minutes before she couldn't stand waiting anymore. When we entered the hospital, my mother was horrified to see my father leaning against the counter, holding his upper stomach area and clearly in pain, begging for help while the nurse behind the counter kept asking for his insurance papers. My mother stepped up, glared at the woman and told her that she had all the necessary papers and demanded, in a very loud voice, that the woman get her husband some help. The woman took one look at my mother, knew she meant business and did just that. My father was taken back into a room while my mother filled out the necessary forms and my sister and I stood around not knowing what to do. After a while, we were told we could go in to see my dad. My mother was upset because they didn't seem to be doing anything for my father. He was not hooked up to any machines monitoring his vitals or anything. My father assured us he was feeling better, but no sooner had we sat down than he told my mother to get a doctor because he felt like he was going to pass out and he did just that. My mom, my sister and I rushed out to get help. We were told to stay out of the way as they rolled what I later learned was a crash cart into my father's room. Some of my mom and dad's friends arrived at the hospital and just as they did a nurse came up to my mother and asked to speak to her somewhere where it was more comfortable. I didn't know at 9 years of age that those words meant 'come with me so I can tell you the bad news' therefore, I was shocked by my mother's reaction when she started yelling for my father and crying. I will never forget that long walk down the hallway, past the closed door where my father was, into another room where a doctor told us that my father was dead of a massive heart attack.
Now I know some people will say that it was just my father's time to go. That no matter what had been done, he would have died. Maybe they are right, but we'll never know for sure since he wasn't given a fighting chance. If the nurse hadn't spent all that time asking for money before getting my father proper attention, if they hadn't left my dad lying back there for some time alone, if they had monitored his heart immediately instead of just letting him lay there without being hooked up to any equipment because they thought he had an 'ulcer'.....so many ifs that I'll never know for sure until I stand in front of God and can ask him myself.
When I was older and had moved to the same side of town as my mother for a time, I slashed my hand open when the handle of our sliding glass door came off while I was shutting it. I called my in-laws and they came to get me, since my mother is like myself and gets hysterical when something like that happens. Even though I was sick from the loss of blood, I told my father-in-law to pass that hospital and go to the other one that was a few miles further down the road. I know that may sound stupid to some people, but I could not bear to put myself into the hands of a place I thought had let my father down. Little did I know that the hospital I went to would be just as bad.
When we got to the emergency room my in-laws were told to have a seat while they took all my information. After she was done, the woman told me to wait and they would call me as soon as a doctor was available. As soon as they could turned into half an hour and then almost an hour. I was getting sicker by the minute and the towel I was holding was soaked in blood. My husband entered the hospital just as my father-in-law went over to the desk to find out why I had not been called back. Turns out the woman was waiting for a payment upfront which she either forgot to tell me about or I was in too much pain to hear. My husband and my father-in-law both pulled money out of their pockets at the same time, waved it in front of the woman's face and demanded that I be seen right away. Of course, as soon as the green was flashed, I was taken back where a doctor proceeded to stitch up my hand.
Years later, my son and daughter were playing in our room while my husband was watching television. Unfortunately, my husband had had his pocket knife out and had laid it on the arm of a chair, not realizing he hadn't closed it up. My daughter pushed my son into the chair and the knife embedded itself in my son's arm. It was not a very big knife, thankfully, but it was old and rusty. My husband rushed my son to the same hospital and they were gone for almost 3 hours. When they came back, I asked them what took so long. My husband said that when they got there he proceeded to tell them what had happened, showed the woman behind the desk the knife in my son's arm and told her that he was a diabetic. Now anyone with any common sense knows a diabetic is prone to infections and should be taken care of asap. Instead, they were told to wait. My husband made continuous trips to the desk and kept getting put off. Finally, after an hour my husband yelled at the woman, pointing at the sign above the door and asking her what it said. When she replied 'emergency', my husband asked her why she thought a diabetic with a rusty knife in his arm didn't qualify as an emergency. After that, my son was taken back, the knife was removed and he was patched up and given the proper shots.
Just 3 months ago, our oldest daughter, who also has Type 1 diabetes was visiting her friends in a nearby county. She started showing signs of having Ketoacidosis, a very serious and life-threatening condition for diabetics. She couldn't breathe and her friends took her to the hospital. She told them she was diabetic and that she was having trouble breathing, which in my opinion, is an emergency and required immediate attention. Instead, after taking down her information, the woman told her to go have a seat. My daughter reiterated that she couldn't breathe and the woman waved her away, saying that they were very busy and that if she couldn't wait she needed to go to another hospital. This was the only hospital in the county and it was at least 25 miles to the nearest hospital in Lexington. My daughter's friends put her in the car and raced to the first available hospital in Lexington where she was immediately treated. The doctor at this hospital told us that if she had been a half an hour later, she would have died. As it was, she ended up in the ICU for 5 days. When my niece was complaining about the other hospital, one of the nurses at the hospital my daughter was at tried to take up for them by saying that emergency rooms were very understaffed and it was probably better for our daughter that she knew they were busy and left instead of waiting there. That might be true, I replied, but didn't that hospital have ambulances? Wouldn't it have been better for that person to take the time to call for an ambulance, notify the nearest hospital and have my daughter safely transported by said ambulance instead of a nervous 19-year-old boy driving a car and breaking every driving law in town?
To sum up, most hospital emergency rooms are not emergency rooms. They are waiting rooms closer to doctors and nurses than your own home but that is all. And while I know that hospitals have to make money to function, I feel they are too concerned about getting their money up front than taking care of the patient. There is only one hospital in Lexington that I feel has an emergency room that lives up to those words and that is where we go whenever someone in our family is in need of medical attention. We have visited this emergency room four times....three with our diabetic son and once with our diabetic daughter.
As soon as we have walked in and told them our children are diabetic and are sick, the doctors and nurses waste no time in surrounding and taking care of them.
Then there was the time my son was hit in the head by a baseball that had been shot out of a pitching machine at the park where he played. He was knocked out for a few seconds and one of the coaches there who was a paramedic suggested I take him to the hospital to have him checked out. By the time I had driven to the emergency room, he had a huge knot in the middle of his forehead that was later called 'a galion bruise'. As I sat with my son and was checking him in, a resident came over and demanded to know what had happened to make that big of a bruise on his forehead. Now most parents would probably get upset, thinking that he was going to accuse them of child abuse, but I was glad that he was so concerned. I let my son tell him how the simpletons at the park had decided to practice fielding with the kids by shooting baseballs out of the pitching machine instead of one of them hitting them in the air, as should be done. The resident proceeded to call a doctor over....a doctor who also coached in his spare time. They ranted and raved about the stupidity of the person in charge and the laziness that had led to my son's injury, to the point where my son forgot about his hurting head and began to laugh at them. They tried to get me to sue the park, even offering medical backup, but since I felt just as responsible since I had allowed my son to go out there, even though I had had my reservations about the safety of what was going on, I decided to just make them pay the medical bills from the insurance the park had on the kids.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I have finally found a hospital that puts it's patients before the almighty dollar. And while there are people out there that have probably had a bad experience with this hospital, since every human being is fallible, I can honestly say that they have given me hope for emergency rooms in general. Maybe myself or my loved ones just happened to catch those other hospitals on bad days, maybe not. However, I certainly hope that these hospitals find some way to have 99% good days at least. They are not in the business of selling cars, furniture or any of the other businesses that can get away with having said bad days or being understaffed. They are in the business of saving lives and making decisions that can affect patients and families alike, for the rest of their lives.