instead of ranting about the state of healthcare in the United States, i'm just going to bitch about my visit to hospital yesterday.

first, i cannot make an appointment to see a physician. i have to show up in the emergency room for a non-emergency condition. all i needed was a brief recheck on my back, neck and shoulder, and to have a reauthorization for the prescription i was given. sounds simple, and like it wouldn't take too long, but, because i had to go through the emergency room, i was placed in queue by priority/severity of injury with the trauma patients. when compared to a 94 year old woman who fell and broke her leg, an 8 year old boy who broke his arm in a fall from his bike, the woman with the car accident spinal injury, the guy having the heart attack, and teenage girl with the stab wound, i was low priority. i didn't mind that. i'm a patient person, and i'm compassionate (no, really, i am), so i had no problem with waiting for the trauma patients to be treated.

i did have a problem with being given a lower priority than the woman with the migraine. Excedrin, sweety. they make a migraine formula. i also have a problem with the hospital having only one physician, one physician's assistant, and one nurse on duty in the ER. i know Tulsa isn't Chicago, and we can't have a staffful of beautiful Noah Wyle type physicians there 'round the clock, but i think that a second doctor (or even a second nurse) would have really helped out a lot.

so, after a couple of hours sitting in the exam room, the pain pill i'd take during the afternoon was starting to wear off. the PA examined me, and talked with me for ten minutes or so. she was very nice. she checked my reflexes, then pressed at various spots on my back until i winced and yelped. she asked about my medication. i told her that it'd been several hours since i'd taken anything and that i was really starting to hurt again. she smiled and said "the doctor should be in to see you soon." and she was gone. never saw her again.

the nurse on duty, it turns out, was a guy that i'd worked with at Hell-Mart several years ago. we talked for a while, catching up and reminiscing about the Hellspawned people we used to work with. the last 5 years have been very good to him. very good. tasty good. he popped in every once in a while to check on me. "how are you?" he'd say. "i hurt," i'd say. "i'm sorry," he'd say. "the doctor should be in to see you soon."

the doctor... never came. i waited in that stupid little exam room, which, by the way, had what looked like a meathook hanging from the ceiling, and scared me a bit that a hospital would have meathooks at all, save in the morgue, i guess. even worse than the meathook was the boredom. there was nothing to read in that exam room, not even pamphlets on STDs or pregnancy. there weren't any posters on the wall, not even an eye-chart. there. was. nothing. egg shell white walls with some sort of southwestern style border stenciled around the top, and the floor was tiled in ugly. it was terrible.

worse than the room was the pain. after 5 hours, the medication had faded completely. i hurt. i was curled up on the little bed, whimpering to anyone who passed by 'just some aspirin, please.' it was just my luck that, of all the hospitals in Oklahoma, i chose the one that didn't have any Tylenol on hand. that's the only explanation for why a pleasant and smiley PA and the dashingly handsome nurse gave me nothing, if only to shut me up.

after the seventh hour, i poked my head out of the exam room and saw an EMT crew bring in another trauma patient with a blood-gushing head wound that i was certain would make him a higher priority than me. i gave up. i went home, popped the last of the painkiller, chugged a beer, and went to bed.

unfortunately, i have to try again tonight. at minimum, i need a release (for the insurance company) and a new prescription (for me, so i'll quit whining about how much i hurt). my boss has denied me time off this afternoon to see a physician because he's "under pressure for a deadline" today, which is wrong not only on ethical grounds, but i believe company policy makes it a no-no also. i'll have to find out.