HOSPITAL HELL
I’ve been thinking about health care in America in light of the resuscitated claims by republicans far and wide that universal health care is available if you need it simply by going to the emergency room. And then, in conjunction with reading about the death of a patient in an emergency room — a death that was avoidable had the ER staff simply treated the patient and not ignored her as she died a very painful and public death — I got to thinking about an ER visit I had a number of years ago back in New York.
My experience, although not one that ended in death, was an experience that had me alternately wishing for my own death and seriously contemplating homicide.
The events took place one weekend at the height of the D.C sniper killings. It was on a Saturday evening and during the night in question I had been feeling increasingly bad — the results of what turned out to be a near fatal allergic reaction to an HIV medication — and eventually felt bad enough and scared enough for my own well-being that I acceded to Richard’s demands that I go to the emergency room at St. Vincents, our neighborhood hospital in Greenwich Village.
Arriving at St. Vinnies at the height of the Saturday evening rush I was triaged and assigned a gurney in the ER where I would stay, completely untreated, except for an occasional visit by a harried nurse to make sure I was still breathing, for 27 hours.
During that time I had the privilege of being stuck next to a drunken, homeless gentleman who, over the course of the four or five hours that he was my neighbor, repeatedly shit himself with the most volatile example of explosive diarrhea one can imagine. All the while never once being cleaned or attended to by hospital staff.
Eventually my power shitting neighbor sobered up and he wandered off and out into the night. But not before he had been reinforced by yet another homeless person who took the gurney on my other side.
This poor soul had an oozing, suppurating, gangrenous leg wound approximately ten inches in length, 3 inches wide and at least a half inch deep that he picked at relentlessly.
Have you ever been around gangrene? It smells worse than shit and his was so ripe that it overpowered the fecal miasma created by my recently departed power shitting neighbor.
I can’t tell you what became of this guy because after my 27 hours in the ER were over and I was hauled away to a room he was still there, still picking, still stinking and still untreated.
However, my time in the ER would not have been complete without some drama. The first bit was the young, gay, very nellie, junkie/drug seeker who swore up and down that he had kidney stones and demanded Demerol for the pain. The more the hospital staff refused — since they are highly trained in spotting drug seekers, if not in actually administering any health care to those actually in need — the more he screamed in agony.
Eventually, after four or five or six hours of his non-stop yelling a doctor ordered him up a syringe full of Demerol and just as soon as the nurse had pushed it he was up and heading for the door and the next emergency room on his Saturday evening itinerary.
Then, as dawn was approaching, several members of New York’s Finest entered the ER dragging with them an unfortunate malefactor wearing handcuffs and a good deal of blood.
This fun group was not in the ER more than a minute before words had been exchanged between the perp and the cops. The cops ordered the perp to shut the fuck up and the perp laughed and spat a big loogie mixed with perp blood square in the face of one of the officers.
At this turn of events I thought to myself, “Oops! You shouldn’t have gone and done that.”
Whereupon the cops dragged their prisoner out of the main ER and into an empty bio-hazard isolation room directly across from my bed and proceeded to beat the shit of the guy.
It was right about this time that I was informed that I was being admitted and would be moved to a room upstairs. At the same time I was shot full of Dilaudid for the pain I was in {and had been for the past 27 hours} and as I was trundled out of the ER in my hydromorphone haze my mind worried that I would be missing the next bit of theater.
I shouldn’t have been concerned.
After getting to my room and being put to bed by a lovely Jamaican nurse I had just dozed off when I felt a presence next to me. Assuming that it was the nurse returned to take vitals or administer an enema something I rolled over to go back to sleep but when I heard the rustling of fabric and the jingle of loose change I looked over my shoulder to find . . .
My roommate robbing me.
Yes, he had my cargo shorts in his hands and was going through my pockets and wallet, and when he saw that my eyes were open he pretended he was trying to open the unopenable hospital window next to my bed.
As I got up from the bed with murder in my drugged eyes he bolted the room and when I informed the nurse at the nurses station of what had transpired all I got was a bored shrug.
Whereupon I demanded that she call security.
Whereupon security arrived — after a 20 minute wait — and informed me that it wasn’t their responsibility to make sure their patients didn’t get robbed by their other patients.
Whereupon while arguing with the security guard my roommate returned and proceeded to threaten me with violence for accusing him of being a thief while the security guard stood by and did nothing.
Whereupon I took the phone off the desk, called the 6th precinct, asked for one of my cop friends whom I knew to be on duty, and informed him of the events that had just transpired.
Whereupon about four point three seconds after hanging up there were a half dozen New York City cops trundling down the hallway looking like they were more than happy to shoot some motherfuckers on my behalf if it came to it.
At that point in time a couple of things happened in very short order — my roommate was put into cuffs, security started babbling to the police about how they don’t have the power to arrest, the cops told security to save it for someone who gave a fuck, and the head nurse called the on-call hospital administrator who showed up two point one seconds after the call and offered to move me to a nice quiet, private room up on the “Cardinal’s Wing”.
This last bit — the offer to move me — was after I gave the guy the name of my lawyer and told him to expect a call.
And yes, you read that part about the “Cardinal’s Wing” right. Because the Archbishop of New York had a WING at St. Vincent’s reserved just for him and his fellow members of the Clan of the Red Beanie.
And it was a very nice wing and a very nice room indeed! In fact, while I was there for that single day I was the only patient in residence in a fully staffed wing that held over a dozen suites.
You read that right, too. Suites. Not rooms.
And the reason for my 27 hour wait for a room that I referred to earlier? Well, that was because the hospital didn’t have any beds available to put me in.
But they did have a dozen empty suites on a fully staffed wing on its very own floor.
Oh, and what about my condition, you may well ask.
Well, I’m glad you did. For you see, although I was suffering from a dangerous reaction to one of my HIV meds, the hospital staff had misdiagnosed my condition and were treating me for . . . . wait for it. . . .
Kidney stones.
I almost felt bad for the poor screeching drug seeker from earlier in the evening when I found this out. I mean, if he had come in presenting with the same symptoms I had maybe they would have actually treated him for kidney stones instead of forcing him to wait all those hours.
And btw, this all happened to me in spite of the fact that I had and have 24 karat solid gold insurance coverage.
So yeah, if you don’t have insurance in America and you get sick you can go to the ER for treatment. But if you do you should keep one eye on your wallet and the other eye on what drugs they’re giving you {if they give you any at all}, because if you don’t you could end up robbed or dead.
Or both.
But as the republicans like to say — It’s the best health care in the world!
March 31st, 2012 at 7:24 am
That’s silly. The Cubans have the best health care in the world.
March 31st, 2012 at 7:55 am
A friend of mine that works at a hospital here was telling me a bout a recent event involving a drunk brought into the ER, they put him in the bed and ignored him. Later they found him dead, he had been dead for 3 hours. They are cutting staff and making nurses take care of more and more people to cut costs. But yeah, hey, best health care in the world.
March 31st, 2012 at 8:06 am
Okay, it’s clearly not the best. But for the sake of argument, let’s say that it is. Does that then mean, good enough? Does it then mean, no need to improve it? Be grateful? What?
As for the story – what a great read!
March 31st, 2012 at 8:21 am
Ya know, I have gone without health insurance now for what feels like forever. The worst experience for me was when I had a very serious eye infection and nearly lost my left eye. I was afraid to go to the ER because I just knew I would get a bill I couldn’t pay, at the very last minute I finally went when my eye was about ready to explode! Thankfully an eye specialist made the hour long drive to where I was and basically saved me from a life of wearing a patch. I also ended up qualifying for a charity program that covered 95% of the cost. I am extremely grateful but it still pisses me off that as a country we still don’t “get it” that EVERYBODY needs health insurance for the system to function, plain and simple.
Whenever I hear people argue against universal health insurance coverage all I really hear is racism and prejudice, what a damn shame in 2012.
March 31st, 2012 at 8:41 am
Also, too, keep in mind that when you hear some asshole claim that everyone has access to healthcare in this country and that all you need to do if you get sick or injured and don’t have insurance is simply go to the ER, that person is spewing fucking nonsense and assumes that you’re too fucking dim to know it.
What happens in an ER is — Emergency Medicine. You get stabilized, you get screened and that’s pretty much it.
So if you come in with kidney failure and no insurance, the ER has ZERO obligation to put you on dialysis or give you a free kidney transplant.
And if you come in to the ER with a crippling headache and they determine you’ve got a brain tumor, you get a Rx for Tylenol 3 and sent home with a, “If you start to feel worse {as your tumor metastasizes through your brain and eventually kills you}, then come back and see us.”
But what you won’t get is neurosurgery.
They treat your immediate symptoms so that you’re stable enough for release or transfer to a charity facility {if there’s one in your area willing to take you} and then they send you on your merry way.
March 31st, 2012 at 9:08 am
But Scott! But! Don’tcha know that if you institute SOCIALIZED MEDICINE in the US, you might have longer wait times than we do in Canada? Like, the last time I went to Emerg (taking my 4-yo nephew who’d broken his arm*), we had to wait about an hour and a half, because we were there at 5:30 am and the radiologist didn’t get in to work until 7. It was horrible, I tell you. We sat in a little curtained room and played I-Spy to keep him distracted. Horrible!
*He actually did a greenstick fracture on his arm at about 9 pm, and I had called my mom (retired nurse) for advice. She gave me a few exercises for him to try, which he could, so she recommended Tylenol and bed because it sounded like a sprain. After we spent several hours changing the cold-pack and not sleeping and lots of crying, I called the Primary Care Network 24-hour hotline, and the (non-retired) nurse recommended that we’d better go see a doctor.
March 31st, 2012 at 10:54 am
I love your bedtime stories Scott.
March 31st, 2012 at 11:47 am
The best health care in the world, if you are Dick Cheney or the President of Yemen, etc. I’ve had health coverage too, and I’ve spent hours in the ER amidst screaming humans that the thick-skinned “caregivers” ignored or triaged until they deserved to be serviced. The 9th circle of Hell. Somehow I don’t believe Romney, Gingrich, Santorum, Paul or any of their family, friends, staff or neighbors will ever experience. That is why the Gomerts of this country can boast on Fox of this compassionate Conservative system; all the right people are dying. BTW, every town has a potter’s field.
March 31st, 2012 at 11:58 am
Yes you can go to Emergency and get treated (stabilized) and possibly admitted to a room, but then you are responsible for the bill which is HUGE without insurance. How will you pay because you have a job that does not offer insurance or you are unemployed or do not qualify for Medicaid or Medicare? You can try to make payments, or declare bankruptcy or hope that you came early enough in the year that the hospital still has charity funds to pay for the costs of your hospital visit.
The Republicans only mention that the ER will treat you, however they conveniently forget to mention how much it will cost you.
March 31st, 2012 at 12:06 pm
Scott, what you describe is some of the rot that’s eating America and turning us into a nation of utter barbarians. Most consumers understand that in general quality decreases when you pay less for a product, and increases when you pay more. Welcome to New America under conservatives. You pay as much or more than you already paid, and you get less in return.
A hospital administrator can’t get a 20% per annum raise without laying off a few nurses whose wages, once the nurses are laid off, get redirected into that administrator’s pockets, right?
You’re really seeing this kind of manipulation of labor (lowering wages or staff reductions) via very tactical budget moves happen in places where conservatives are running government. Conservative administrator salaries increase while the administrators who get to make hiring/firing decisions lay off frontline employees who provide the actual services that your taxpayer dollar are supposed to by paying for.
The unspoken truth that conservatives will never say out loud but which is pretty clear in their attacks on “big government” is that when they get the smaller government that they hoodwinked the public into thinking is something good, then they are NOT going to pass any savings onto the taxpayer. Taxpayers are a captive audience. They will have to take what they are given. Instead of providing services to taxpayers for their tax dollars, conservatives are going to keep more of that tax money for themselves and their cronies via the bloated salaries they have control over creating and expanding.
March 31st, 2012 at 2:06 pm
Anyone going into hospital in our great nation needs to take someone with them who will:
Yell and bitch at staff until the patient is seen, protect them from staff and other patients, check all medication dosage amounts, bring them real food, and just plain look out for them in every way. Also, it gives the staff notice that someone is watching them.
March 31st, 2012 at 2:59 pm
We have medical insurance in Aust as well.. but it’s to get you that private room, not because you’ll die otherwise. You can actually just go public without any real problem. and often, no cost.
Recently the other half scratched his eye with a piece of grass.. trite you say.. except that it ulcerated.
So off to the local ER who had us wait 4 (?) hours. He was then seen by the on call Dr.. then the senior resident.. then kept in overnight so that he would be sent straight off to the larger Royal North Shore to see the opthamologist… who saw him daily for a week.. then weekly for another few. And he came through without any permanent damage, which is apparently rare.
And without any cost whatsoever (apart from eyedrops).
Geez I hate that socialised medicine.. (so that’s us and Canadialand… hmm)
March 31st, 2012 at 9:56 pm
Scott – I’m a >long-time< reader (lurker) here at BIE, and I have to say that your story-telling (and writing, in general) is as good as anyone's…it's a joy to read your stuff. Thanks, and don't stop. BTW, I, too, really enjoy the construction pix and commentary!
April 1st, 2012 at 3:25 am
Ugh, ERs are a mess. Also, this current “for profit” insurance bullshit we have in the US can suck my dick. Sadly, my father buys the bullshit that it’s “the best healthcare system in the world,” even after he (and my mom) have had to deal with insurance because of my diabetes and Cerebral Palsy.
I got a new SMO brace made and the thing cost around $2,300 and they charged $30 for the fucking straps. The SMO only cost $30 to make though. Luckily, I have good insurance under my mom but that’s going away in less than a year. I doubt I’ll have a good enough job in that time that will have decent coverage.
Fun times!
April 1st, 2012 at 5:52 am
st. francis in san francisco has such a wing, & i have repeatedly stayed there.
i don’t believe your story about the cardinal’s wing, mainly because you do tend
to overexaggerate. those wings are reserved for those us who were born rich-
not married well or earned it. there are many reasons i knew i could threaten
you & get away with it… one being that i am related to two presidents, and the
other because i have had a walking tour of camp david. anyone with that level
of clearance can literally do anything, say anything and not be penalized for it.
i pick my battles, but because you really don’t know me… well, i will continue
donating to AIDS charities, mainly because yes the level of healthcare in this
country stinks for the 99%, but also because my heart goes out for those
inflicted. yes, even “scott smith” from louisville. take care, scotty.
April 1st, 2012 at 7:24 am
secretsinner — Yours is definitely the comment of the day. Unfortunately its not the mornonic comment of the day, because its just too nutso for that.
But regardless, thank you for letting me wake up to it this morning. It always reassures me to know that there are people out there who are actually crazier than I am.
Not only does the first sentence of your comment essentially corroborate what I wrote — that since St. Francis in SF has such a wing then one could reasonably assume that St. Vincent’s in New York would too — but then in the next sentence you say you don’t believe St Vinnie’s has such a wing because they’re reserved for rich assholes like you!
Your claim of being related to two presidents {I’m assuming its the Bush’s since the Adams’ and the Roosevelt’s clearly had way more on the ball than you}, taking a stroll at Camp David once, your supposed {fantasy} security clearance and your get out of jail free card. . . well, those were just icing on the cake of the complete and utter looney tunes that was your comment.
But hey, keep donating to those AIDS charities — because you’ve obviously got a little AIDS dementia going on and will probably need their help soon.
April 1st, 2012 at 7:35 am
Great advice Greg. The problem is that in most states many hospitals won’t let people who are not “family” at bedside. And since gays and lesbians are not family in the eyes of the law in the vast majority of states having a loved one on hand to advocate for you is a battle in itself.
April 1st, 2012 at 11:28 am
It is nice to know that Barbara Bush is contributing to AIDS charities.
April 1st, 2012 at 12:04 pm
wow scott! you’ve got some really quite batshit crazy readers and commenters don’t you? the deep state of delusion that this clown must live in who claims to be related to two presidents and has strolled camp david with his security clearance is really amazing. do you think his handlers let him out on the street alone, or does he have to be escorted?
April 1st, 2012 at 3:47 pm
The problem with health insurance is that it is for-profit. That one thing perverts and creates problems for everything else in the system. THAT must be changed. I don’t get why nobody is trying to change that. The current discussion just breaks my heart. Other democratic countries have health insurance mandates, such as Great Britain, Germany, and Canada, to name a few. So why are we balking at this? Is our Constitution just a big stick up our ass, or what? The problem with conservatives is that they want no change at all, even when the world is crumbling around them. I don’t think that is what the founding fathers had in mind at all.
April 1st, 2012 at 7:00 pm
If you could kindly tell our self-loathing countrymen up here in the Great White North, Scott of the non-Utopian healthcare one can get even with insurance, that would go a long way to alleviating our self-loathing. No matter how many times I try, I still get the “but when my father was vacationing in Florida and had to have his gallbladder removed” stories. Incidentally, our aims at reform seem to be trying to increase insurance involvement, which will probably complicate our existing challenges we have with our system up here. Strangely, having the peace of mind knowing you cannot go broke or die because you do not have adequate insurance to be treated in the ER is getting underappreciated these days.