what are the hospitals like where you live? [View All]

[anarch]

I just got back from the ER at Washington Hospital Center--not for me, for my girlfriend, who had some kind of fainting situation this morning and was taken there in an ambulance, and was evidently brought a couple feet inside the door and left there unattended for about seven hours. I was finally able to get there, thinking I would go sit with her and hold her hand and so on, and waited for about another hour, being told she was "next on the list" (after being told she was #2 on the list about four hours earlier), but eventually we came to the conclusion that there was no way she was seeing a doctor before midnight or so, and she decided she was feeling better, so we bailed out. Although we couldn't even get anyone to pull her IV out (it was put in by the paramedics in the ambulance) until she started to pull it out herself in frustration.

The woman next to her--right next to her, in fact, also just inside the door--had been there pretty much as long. Another guy who had been next to her, with a head injury, also got up and left after waiting about four hours. While I was there, some dialysis patient whose son had been told earlier, "Look, we'll get to him as soon as we can, we've got really sick people here! If you're breathing, you'll just have to wait," had to be rushed to the back because he was moments from death after being left in the waiting room for God only knows how long. I guess he finally stopped breathing?

As far as I know, there wasn't any particular major incident or outbreak or whatever today...just a Wednesday. I can't even imagine what would happen if there was some big emergency. The other hospital emergency departments in town were evidently "closed", as was WHC's at some point. What the hell does that even mean? Where do the ambulances go when all the hospitals are "closed"?

Oh well, at least we don't have free universal health care...then you might have to wait a long time to see a doctor or something. I've decided that next time I have a medical emergency, I will just die as peacefully as possible in my own home rather than go to the ER.