DECEMBER 25th, continued:
- I was amazed at how quickly I was called into the Triage room, two minutes. I explained my condition. They were patient with me despite my slurred speech. I went right into the ER and took bed #8. The ward was about 3/4ths full.
Within three minutes (I kid you not), a doctor was there for me. He ordered X-Rays of my chest. Barely five minutes later, the X-Ray tech showed up. Ten minutes later, I was back at #8. Now THIS is emergency service at its best!
Ten minutes after that came the diagnosis: viral pneumonia stage 2. You couldn't see my right lung as it was obscured with the pneumonia. Twenty-four hours later and that lung would have collapsed under the pressure.
The only substantial wait followed while trying to be assigned to a room. It ended up being about a 2-hour wait, but time was still creeping at a standstill for me. I "passed" (to be polite) a mix of liquid & solid, and I actually may have died right there if the nurse had not rescued me.
As I said, Garden City Hospital overall was very very good. But let's try to get OSHA in there to monitor housekeeping. Even two hours later as I was being wheeled to my room, they still hadn't cleaned up the mess adequately. "They make us do all this extra work," one kept saying. Well, a hospital needs to be clean and sanitary... come on!
One guy in the ER with me had to have gauze stuffed through his nose all the way down to his stomach, and he was my roommate. I had to give him kudos for his guts. I didn't know what his problem was at first because he was gasping for air and complaining loudly, but after I found out, he was a trouper to me. He had no complaints about his situation throughout the night.
The hospital bed was a much better fit than the ER table, but I felt as if I were sliding off everything I was laying on. My back pain came back for the first time in months and was debilitating. For the third night in a row, I could not sleep. Nothing for my cough or pain, just a double IV drop of sodium and magnesium.
My magnesium level was zilch. Zinc was near zilch. I had hypothermia, malnutrition, rolling veins, and nearly had a seizure. Blood pressure - forget it - it was stuck at 85 / 40 - dangerously low. Only one check out of 14 I ended up getting had systolic above 100. Turns out I have very low blood pressure, in fact. I ended up with a 103 fever that night, but that was treated. But I didn't know how I would handle food.
DECEMBER 26th:
- Food came in the morning and I ate about 1/2 of it. Watched Price Is Right for the first time in months... Drew Carey's doing a much better job of hosting, by the way. The roomate was discharged in early PM, so I had the room to myself for the remainder of the stay. My thoughts turned to how long I might be in there, and what would happen to my car if security thought it was abandoned.
Finally gained back enough of my voice to where I could finally place a couple calls to friends and local relatives. Phone and TV services were free - and the TV service showed it: hospital channel after hospital channel. They don't bring up newspapers. Their magazines have an average shelf age of two years. I was bored out of my mind because I couldn't read something. I must have gone through at least 14 cups of water today -- at least I knew my system was being cleaned out - it needed it badly...
