If you can make it alive to another emergency room, please do it.
- when I arrived, the entire road to the emergency room was blocked off by construction. There was a detour sign that pointed to nowhere. I rolled down my window to ask someone with an official ID how to get into the emergency room and they said no clue. My instructions from someone inside the hospital ended up being to drive through the parking lot, park as close as possible, and walk to the entrance. This, obviously, would be absurd for anyone with a disability or an emergency where they couldn't walk or wait to park.
- when I walked in, the emergency room was completely empty with nobody at the front desk. The leisurely attitude of the staff member who came out of a back room from eating a snack to check me in did not have any feeling of urgency
- I have a fairly common mental disorder called anxiety. It happens to be severe/extreme and triggered by doctor's offices. The staff were completely clueless as to how to manage the mental health emergency that was happening alongside my physical emergency. I ended up being the one to request that they medicate me so I could calm down enough to receive treatment without having to be strapped to the table. They acted like this wasn't possible until I specifically requested that they give me two Xanax, which they did. Immediately after I swallowed them they started trying to draw blood and put in an IV whilst I was flailing and hyperventilating uncontrollably. I asked them repeatedly to please wait at least until the meds kicked in, to please stop touching me, and they refused. Every time I started to calm down a little someone would forcefully grab my arm which made me increasingly distrustful and almost led to me fleeing the room. This lasted for an hour and a half.
- I finally gave in to the persistent nurse and let her hold my arm while the rest of me flailed uncontrollably. She got the IV part way in, started taking blood, then, obviously, since I was flailing uncontrollably, the IV fell out and my blood sprayed all over the bed. This obviously did nothing to help my ongoing panic attack. She couldn't find another vein and left the room for a long time.
- after a while the doctor came back in and reported that they had basically given up on trying to get an IV in me, after multiple hours of imploring me that it was important to check my blood count and do a CT scan. Suddenly they were tired of me and decided to send me home with two antibiotics.
- My primary care doctor later told me that this was overtreating my symptoms and they should not have given me harsh antibiotics without knowing what was wrong with me at all. These antibiotics completely wrecked my stomach and I lost 5 pounds in a few days, turning a potential case of food poisoning into a weeklong nightmare.
- after they gave up on me, my xanax finally kicked in, and I asked them to please continue trying to test me because I was worried for my safety. They sent a different nurse in ( a better, calmer nurse ) who found a vein that the other nurse could not. I waited a while for the test results to come back and they said I couldn't get accurate results because I was freaking out too bad which made my blood congeal too fast. My family member who is a nurse says that this is not true and was probably their fault.
- after getting no results from my bloodwork, the doctor inexplicably decided a CT scan wasn't necessary. At this point I was too traumatized and drugged up to even ask questions.
- they let me walk on my own through the parking lot to find my ride. I barely remember this besides being confused and in bright light. My mom said she couldnt believe they just released me like that, with my car keys in hand, while zonked out of my mind.
This was my first time getting an IV in my life, one of my biggest fears. It was wholly traumatizing and honestly this experience makes me not even want to go to an emergency room ever again. read more