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 A Health Care day for me.  September 18, 2009

I had an interesting day yesterday, not my normal day of being on the Internet. I went to a walk-in clinic with heart flutters. Now if you don’t know what heart flutters are, it’s a feeling your heart is ‘fluttering’ instead of doing its normal beat. First I was surprised at the attention I got when I walked in the clinic. Very good I thought, even though my mind was on my flutters. I was asked if I knew how to use a computer. “I do,” I said, and was told to sign in at a computer in the corner. I answered questions of age, health insurance, my health in general, past and current, allergies, meds taken, etc. Then I was taken to a cubical and hooked up for an electro cardio gram. Doctor came in and read the up down lines on the paper saying, ‘I think you should go to ER.’

“Hospital? Oh no,” I said, hoping to change his mind. But he kept to his decision of a possible heart attack. ‘You’ll go right to ‘Triage area’. (Now this is the Orlando area, big city, and the flu is everywhere, according to papers and TV. Do I want to submit myself to this?) Heart flutters and I drive to the ER two miles away.

Once there, I sit waiting among children and older folks who really look ill, not having flutters like me, but eyes half closed, holding stomach, sickness all around me. One woman stands by the sliding glass door entrance behind me, looking bad, so I ask, “Are you all right?” She answers, ‘I feel like I’m going to faint.’ I yell to the woman behind the main desk. “I think you need a wheelchair here, in a hurry,” and point to the woman behind me. The woman behind the desk motions to a man, who brings a wheelchair.

‘Next,’ some one at the desk says, and I move forward, answering questions, what are you here for, past history, meds, allergies, while I fluttered away. The woman taking info tries to make me laugh, but I am not in the mood. I remember when I had had similar beats in a small town, and was hooked up to a heart monitor right away. Not here, in the big city. Data is taken, bands are placed on my wrist.  I am then led to another area, blood pressure and temp taken. I read the machine, BP 185/101, pulse 95, umm, that’s high, I think. Snap on stickers are attached to my chest and around it, and I’m told to lie still, while another electro cardio gram is taken. 

Next I follow a woman to small room, ‘check point’, where others are in their check point rooms. I hear babies crying, see older folks pushed on stretchers, thinking, they’re really hurting—sad for the very young and the very old. I have maybe another twenty or thirty year to go, if I am lucky, due to my genes, (Mom and Pop).

They said a nurse would be in, so there I lay waiting for someone. Nervous, and not to the bathroom since I left home almost two hours ago, I had to go. I made my way down the crowed hall, looking and asking for a bathroom. The woman behind me at the sliding door, lay on a stretcher in the hall way. “Feel better,” I say as I pass her. ‘You too’, she answers. I notice there’s a camaraderie among ill people. Don’t know what it is, scared, or wonder if we are going to the ‘Big Place’? Something about people feeling ill, in the same boat, needing others’ help.

Back in my cubical, I wait, watching traffic in the hallway and people with masks going into the room opposite me, sliding glass doors on that room. Was it the infectious disease room?

Almost a half hour later someone comes in, introduces her self as my nurse, then hooks me up to a blood pressure cuff, and stickies on my chest with wires that attach to a monitor behind my stretcher. She takes blood from the back of my hand, (I have small veins, hard for them to find.) I had blood work done a few days ago, cholesterol check. This time, a small tube is left on the needle for an IV feed, if needed.

The nurse makes funny talk, I guess because I look scared or concerned. She’s nice, but she isn’t changing the flutters in my heart. She leaves and I wait, having my upper arm crushed every so often by this machine that takes my blood pressure, and a clip on my finger shows how much oxygen is in my system.  

A man comes in wanting to take a chest x-ray and we chat about portable machines that fly through the hospitals hall, or where ever. A nice chatty man, and has been doing his job for fifteen years.

I lie here, listening to crying and happenings, a man next to my room yelling, then a door slams shut. I wonder why a finger print machine hasn’t been made to hold all our past health records. Wouldn’t it be nice to enter a hospital, place your finger on a plate, and your whole medical history come up, medications, surgeries, allergies, and so forth. It seems to me that, in this day and age, if they could make something similar for elite air travel, why can’t the medical industry design one?

An hour or so later a cardiologist comes in, asking more questions. (Too bad no finger print plate, I think.) I’m told the blood came back good, but they need another blood enzyme done in a few hours—six to be exact. It’s one thirty now. “Am I going to stay overnight?” I ask. ‘I don’t think so, it depends on your enzymes. So far so good.’

I wait, listening again to the sounds of the hospital, rattling of trays, closing of doors. I don’t want mine closed, something about a closed door in a hospital, a feeling of aloneness, not connected to others out there in the hall. The babies crying keeps up, now another is brought in by a man in a wheel chair, a very small one. This shouldn’t be, I think. They shouldn’t have to go through this at such a young age. I watch the sad looking man, they wheel him backwards through the sliding glass door room, a mask covering his mouth and nose.

With my right hand, I pull the TV close to watch the news I’d missed for the passed hours. I turn the volume low, not to disturb anyone else, still able to hear the sounds in the hall. My heart flutters, making only a sound in my head that no one else hears, and on the monitor screen the top line dips low. I’d seen this before long ago, when diagnosed with premature ventricle contractions, had to stay in the hospital for two weeks until the medicine stopped the attack. I didn’t want this again, I had no time for this, my life was getting shorter, more days behind me, than in front of me.

Five hours later, I sign a small screen handed to me by a young woman in a business suit. She tells me I’ll probably be staying overnight and need to sign for check in. “I’m staying over night?” I ask. I don’t want to. “The cardiologist said I could go home after the second blood draw. If it comes back okay.”  She tells me that my General Physician has to sign me out. The young woman is nice about it, saying I can only stay a certain amount of time in ER. I need to be transferred to a room, then if the blood work is okay I can leave from my room. ‘You will be charged $1,000 co-pay,’ she tells me and I tell her the hospital should have a holding room for people who may not stay overnight. I didn’t expect this, and thought, if it has to be, it will be. I’ll put it on my credit card.

Upstairs in my room, a woman lies in the other bed. She tells me how happy she is to have a roommate. I don’t want a roommate. I want to go home, but don’t hurt her feelings and introduce my self. While talking, a tech comes in to get my vitals, blood pressure now 122/72. ‘Perfect,’ the tech says. No temp. Now a few questions, she says, and we start again as downstairs, name, age, allergies, medicines taken, surgeries. Why doesn’t she have a computer with all I’ve answered downstairs? I think. The tech puts a holter monitor on me, and I can walk the hall while waiting for my general physician to come sign my release.

A different cardiologist and my physician finally come in asking questions, me saying I want to go home. The cardiologist pokes, my doctor pokes, I tell them flutters are just about gone. ‘If the next blood work comes back normal, you can go home,’ my doctor says. Happy now, having few flutters and thinking I will sleep in my own bed tonight, the sounds of the hall become less known to me. I am disconnected from the hall and rooms full of patients.

A food tray comes, spaghetti and meatballs, a roll, salad, fruit cup, milk and Oreos. “Oh, I’m probably going home, you didn’t need to do that,” I say, and the worker smiles at me. My thought, how much salt is in the tomato sauce? Oreo cookies, my favorite. I eat one meatball, salad, milk and Oreo. I haven’t eaten all day.

At 6:30 they draw blood. I ask how long it will take for the report back. Fifteen or twenty minutes, the drawer tells me. I wait and wait. 7:45 I walk the hall. At the main central desk at a large white board, I see workers gathered, and join them. I hear the nurses name that will be caring for me tonight, and speak up. “I maybe going home tonight, depending on how fast the blood work comes back.” They look at me.

At 8:10 another person comes in saying I can go. Yippie, someone heard me. A few minutes later the nurse is removing the heparin lock, (needle in my hand). I sign a paper and the nurse goes over a follow up; stress test with cardiologist, take my regular meds. I unplug myself from the stickey tabs, and put the holter monitor and gown on the bed. I dress in the bathroom and am out the door by 8:30 p.m.

Home by 9:30, I climb into bed. What a day, I think, twelve hours gone, but glad they didn’t find anything, then wonder why $1,000 for 3 hours stay in a double room? Maybe they should have a holding room for people like me, that come in and don’t stay all night. I could have stayed at the best hotel somewhere for this price. Does the Health Care Industry need an overhaul? You bet. A large amount of money was wasted today, on me, I realize that, and I’m glad I didn’t have a heart attack, but was it all needed? Were the repetitive questions by different people, needed? Wouldn’t it be simpler with a finger print code plate with your health records? Is it possible that the right hand could know what the left hand is doing? So much money could be saved, if ‘they’ looked at Medicare, and other health insurance companies.

Funny thing just happened. The phone rang and on the other end was the walk in clinic asking how I was. Now that’s something. I’ve never gotten a call from any health care facility asking me that. I’ve come to learn people who work in Health Care are good people, it’s the system that needs changing, more efficiency, less of the same questions asked by different people.