“I’m sorry, we don’t have time for dessert. We’re going to the ER.”

Let me preface this post by saying that all involved parties are okay but yes, that is indeed the line I used on my waiter on the other night.  My friend, Lisa, and I had dinner plans for Friday two weeks ago.  She called to say she was on the way, starving, and that, oh, by the way, we might have to go to the emergency room after dinner.  “Sure,” I told her, having already spent my entire afternoon at the vet’s office, racking up a ridiculous bill.  “Bring it on.”  Boy was it brought.

Lisa was suffering from a mysterious hand ailment, and having not physically injured it, this was cause for concern.  After eating a lovely dinner at one of the local Italian places, we decided to go get “The Claw” looked at.  I bet the waiter never heard anyone turn down dessert using the ER as an excuse, but what can I say, I like shock value.

We drove down the the Marina del Rey Hospital, thinking that a smaller hospital might have a less crowded emergency room than say, UCLA.  When we got to the hospital there were an array of characters waiting to be helped.  The general procedure for the ER might have been okay except that it takes forever to get anything done.  We’re not talking the ER of the TV show.  We’re talking the reality of settle-in-this-is-gonna-be-a-long-night ER action.

When we first got to the ER, the admissions people ask for your ID.  They make you fill out a whole form.  Fine, except “The Claw” happened to be Lisa’s writing hand.  I helped her fill out the form, and we finally got to sit down when they called to a new admissions window to give insurance information.  We sat down again and this time the wait was longer.

We finally got called in to a little room, and got all excited thinking we were moving on to bigger and better things.  Alas, we just sat in a tiny room while a nurse asked questions about prescriptions etc.  The nurse happened to be a total jerk.  He asked Lisa to give him the name of the prescriptions, and after she gave a story about why she was on one of the meds, she said, “I guess you don’t need to know that.”  The guy says, all snotty, “If I didn’t need to know it I wouldn’t ask.”  First of all, she was just referring to the story, not the name of the medication, and second, the nurse’s job is to make people feel better, not antagonize.  Gah.

The nurse then asked Lisa to rate her pain on the Universal Pain Scale.  Yes, such a thing exists.  It’s got like six languages and frowny faces showing pain intensity.  Lisa then made what she calls “one of the worst mistakes of my life” and tried to be nice by saying “four” on the pain scale.  Not only was this a vast underestimate, we would look back on this moment and wonder if a “six” would have sped things along.

Sadly, after jerk nurse was done with us, we were discharged back to the waiting area.  Then we waited.   A little girl, in to get stitches, counted the eighteen, or was it nineteen? fish in the fish tank.  Some guy and his friend had on those dust masks.  Luckily there was no visible blood or I might have passed out.  Three more hours passed.

At long last we were called and we finally got to go to the back!  The doctor pointed to a bed in the middle of a hallway and told Lisa to sit down.  He then pulled up a chair for me and said, “Oh yea.  This is the ambulance entry point, so if you see anyone coming, just jump out of the way.”   Are you kidding?  No pressure there.  The doctor then said, “There are four people ahead of you.”  Four people = 1 more hour.

Lisa and I passed the time cursing the Universal Pain Scale.  Then my worst nightmare came true and an ambulance came screaming up.  I jumped on Lisa’s bed.  “Tell me if there’s blood.  I can’t look,” I said.  We held our breath.

“Oh,” Lisa said.  “I think you’re fine.  The woman is texting.”

Sure enough, the stretcher rolled out with some old lady on it and she was texting away.  The creepy male nurse said, “It’s a parade.  You put a smile on my face.”  Despite the levity, it still wasn’t quite the right thing to say.

Finally the nurse decided to attend to us.  He gave Lisa some pain medication, which I had been asking for for twenty minutes, and told us it would take another twenty minutes to kick in.  The real doctor finally showed up and pretty much said, “we don’t know what the problem is, so please consult with your regular doctor.”  I’m not kidding.  Five hours and no diagnosis.  Awesome.  We were discharged by a male nurse with way too long fingernails for someone in a hygienics-related field.

I’m not sure what the moral of the story is except maybe cheat the Universal Pain Scale.  You’re not going anywhere without saying at least six.

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