The Patient Patient

Waiting in the emergency room brings out the worst in people, you’re sick, injured, or worried about someone who checks off box one or two. Everyone has been to the emergency room and almost all the people that have had to wait. Anything short of dying and you could wait for hours, this makes a lot of people angry, if you’re already messed up a wait could be the last straw.

I got to the emergency room a little after midnight, there was confusion of not realizing it was the next day as me and my parents were awake all night, and everyone knows it’s not the next day until you’ve gone to sleep. I will add quickly that I was in for something I’d thought to be more serious than it ended up being, the idea of appendicitis was definitely a fear, but that wasn’t the issue. Of course with the worry of appendicitis got me in quick, or maybe it just felt quick because I was so tired.

The waiting room had the typical hospital smell of latex gloves and cleaner, and there was a wailing baby sitting across from me. The smells made me nauseous and the wailing was, of course, irritating but sick baby, what are you gonna do about it? Kinda felt bad honestly. Maybe a half hour or so and I was in a room, that’s when the real wait began. Saw a nurse, got a blood draw, put on an IV and then waited, and kept on waiting. I was tired and nauseous, and I know why they do it, but poking at a tender spot repeatedly was not my idea of a fun night. It took an hour to see a doctor another hour to get a CT scan, then another hour to find out the results.

I would end up leaving around five in the morning, was it annoying? Would I rather be sleeping at home? Yes to both, but things taking forever in the ER is a good thing, it means you aren’t dying. Throughout the time I spent in a hospital there were code blues and the same doctor seemingly needed to be called over to every department. Patience feels like fluid in a container, it will fill the available space and fit the shape, you can get frustrated and overflow the container but the container will not change shape for you. Later that day it would be five in the morning. I’d go home with a prescription for antibiotics and soon the hatred for yogurt, but the ladder is a story for another time. 

Photo by Miguel Ausejo on Unsplash