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Yahoo!“If you ever have an emergency and have to go to the Cottage ER tell them that you have chest pains.” That was the overwhelming response everyone gave me when I commented that I had to wait over two hours to be diagnosed when I had a recent appendicitis.
At 10 p.m. on a cold Monday night you might not expect to see a large crowd at the ER. Think again. With the homeless shuffling through with blankets over their shoulders, the uninsured using the ER for as their primary care provider, and crowds of people suffering from from flu, coughs, sniffles, snubbed toes, and other “ouchies,” the place was packed.
This was not my first experience with Cottage’s ER. I’ve had various emergency incidents over the years-- broken wrist, knee ligament, and Achilles tendon tears—but none potentially life threatening.
I was given a look by a nurse, my blood was taken, my insurance verified, and I was asked to sign authorizations with an arm that just had an IV line put in. Then I was shunted over to a corner to wait…and wait…and wait. During the wait, the electric door was constantly opening: smokers going outside to get the fix, cell phone users getting theirs as well, security guys coming in from the cold to warm up, dads and moms going outside with children screaming “I wanna go home” in at least three languages, while I tried to keep warm and stay conscious.
I passed out twice from the pain and despite asking for some relief from that or the cold (blankets are apparently reserved for homeless) was told to be patient.
Sometime after midnight, an attendant wheeled me back into the “inner sanctum.” There I was quickly diagnosed, medicated, given an MRI, and set up for surgery. The surgical staff did excellent work, once I got past the ER front desk. My “gangrenous and perforated appendix” was removed without incident using the latest in laparoscopic surgery. Two pin holes in my lower abdomen and a tiny slice in my belly button, no more big scars and long recovery times. A success!
But Cottage’s ER is a failure at least the front end portion. Didn’t this community used to have another competing hospital in town? Maybe next time I should tell them I’m having chest pains or drive to Santa Ynez.
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Michael: I fell your pain...literally. In December of 1999 I woke up and suddenly felt that most excruciting pain of my life--it felt as though someone had driven a knife in my upper right back. At the same instant my right arm went numb. (To this day I have limited feeling in my right hand index finger--some say it was my C5 vertabrae compressing) Anyway, I went to Cottage emergency almost passing out with pain and while I say quietly in the emergency room a nurse with all the warmth of a marine drill sergeant in boot camp kept telling me "You'll just have to wait".
After close to an hour they put me in a room were a few minutes later where the on duty doctor frantically rushed in and told me he didn't have time to see me because the person in the next room was showing symptoms of a heart attack so my medical care consisted of no examination and about one minute of being told to go home and take some painkillers.
June 2001: I'm in the emergency care building across from the YMCA on Hitchcock Ave and almost passing out from pain. My then-72-year father had to help me walk into the place. I sat in agony for almost 2 hours as one, after another, after another after another got waited on, we were all just like numbers, not people. It was me gallbladder, which was taken out a few weeks later.
Our stories have now become indicative of what people can expect. The U.S., thanks to our "representatives" in Washington D.C. (Whom the people keep reelecting) is now the refugee camp for Mexico. Don't get me wrong, these people need medical help as much as we do but wouldn't it be nice if Mexico actually instituted a functioning government so that their people could get adequate medical care in their own country? And while I'm mentioning this: Do those open-border fanatics take into condideration that all "Cheap labor" nonsense is doing is re-distributing the overall demographic so that the doctor-to-patient ratio becomes even MORE extreme?
I'm sure there are a number of other contributing factors that are responsible for the unreasonable long emergency room waits but either way what we all are going through is unacceptable and people had better wake up and take control of this before we start dropping dead in these places as we sit with our assigned number in hand waiting to be seen by yet another overworked medical person.
billclausen (anonymous profile)
June 5, 2008 at 2:27 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I visited Cottage's emergency room twice in the 90's and can attest to the long waits, even then :(
Regarding billclausen's comment ... Based on what I've read, as contributing factors go, the contribution of illegal immigration to emergency room waits is not the driving factor. Rather, it is the ever increasing number of uninsured patients in the U.S. the majority of whom are citizens.
This Kaiser Foundation report:
http://www.kff.org/medicaid/upload/7761....
is one of many I've found that come to the same conclusion.
EastBeach (anonymous profile)
June 7, 2008 at 12:33 p.m. (Suggest removal)
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