This is a copy/paste of some notes I took down after my ER visit in mid-April. Although I have had it posted to my private blog for some time now, I have not felt comfortable in posting it publicly until I had shared it with the hospitals Quality Control Department. Now that I have done so, I will set this post to automatically (magically) appear in 2 weeks.
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I've never spent time in a hospital for myself. Growing up, it was always my brother and sister who spent most of their time in and out of hospitals. They had the charts, and the doctors, and the medications. Not me.
After falling 10 - 14 feet off of the cliff, Jason was telling me we should go into the ER, but after "thinking" it through, I told him we needed to just go home, let the shock wear off, and then see if we still needed to go. How stupid would it be to rush in there all hyped up, and end up not needing anything more than a band-aide? Rash decisions don't work.
So we went home. I sat down on the couch and painstakingly began to try to move my left toes. After putting all of my brainpower on them, I managed to make them twitch ever-so-slightly. But that was it. As the shock started to wear off, the pain started to move in.
I couldn't sit still. The pain in my back was terrible; there was no comfortable position to sit. After about 5 minutes, we decided to get back into the car and go to Urgent Care.
I tried to stand up, but I couldn't make my muscles obey. Jason bent down to pick me up, and it was too much to bear. I started crying and begging him to put me down. Just let me die right here, I don't care!
He finally got me into the car, and we made our way to St Mary's Urgent Care ... to find that it was 3:56 pm and they close at 4:00.
So Jason turned the car around and went to the General ER.
Due to the pain in my back, I was unable to get into the building on my own ... so Jason went inside to get me a wheelchair (which I wanted to object to, but I honestly couldn't walk on my own). We checked in, described what happened, and they got me into a bed very quickly (we were the only ones in there). I told them my worst pain was my lower back, followed by my foot followed by everything else.
They poked my back, said I was ok, and then gave me a pain killer shot. At this point, the Doctor comes in to stitch up my nose. He cleaned out the hole, began the freezing, and then waits for me as I feel my head. I was covered in dust and blood, and asked Jason to try to get the big clump of dirt out of my hair that I was feeling.
He let out a small exclamation when he found that the "dirt" was actually a gash in my skull. The blood had set up to be the big bump I was feeling. The doctor very calmly looks over, says "Well, that will need a staple" and continues in on his work.
Now that I have had time to think about it, I am having a couple of issues/concerns with how I was treated... not for myself, per say, but if I were to have brought in someone else (my sister, a child etc...) I would have found some things unacceptable. I have also shared this story with a few of my closer friends who know how hospitals work and they have told me that it was not how I should have been seen.
They never addressed my severe back pain except to give me the pain shot. They didn't offer a CT Scan, ask if I wanted one, feel my spine ... nothing. (They also didn't offer one for my head)
They didn't check my head... at all. I was in the final stages of my visit, getting stitched up, when I was the one who had to find the hole in my head. Personally, I would think that if someone comes in after falling 10 - 14 feet, you would at the very least check their skull?
Although they put wet towels on a couple of my cuts and scrapes, that is all they did. They didn't try to clean them out or treat them in any other way. They didn't even tell me how I should take care of it. When I asked, I was told to soak in a tub. (Which I ended up unable to do from the severe pain in my back:) )
No discharge instructions were gone over with me. Which .... I should have read more carefully myself, but when I did I was confused between what I had been told and what I was reading.
If it was my child/friend/relative .... I don't know. I would have found this to have been a very unhelpful visit.
3 days after I fell I went to the orthopedics office (at St Marys) for a follow up visit. Jason and I are sitting in the room with him going over the xrays that we had sent over from the General... and he is looking, and looking .... zooming in and zooming out ... and asks again what the doctor said about my foot. I relayed the conversation almost verbatim:
Doctor: *Showing me a skeleton foot* You see these three bones here? They are broken
Me: Broken? Are you SURE?
Doctor: Yes. Broken.
Me: Could they just be fractured?
Doctor: No, they are broken
Me: Cracked?
Doctor: Broken ....
Me: Fine ....
The orthopedic PA looked confused and said he couldn't find any evidence of a break on the xrays and had no idea what the doctor was looking at. He even took them out to get a second opinion from the main orthopedist. I was floored. Seriously? How can that even be possible?
Luckily, he changed out my splint that was made for me during my ER visit (the way that the ER made it was rubbing a spot on my heel raw... I still have a pressure blister that hurts!) and put me in a walking cast boot. It already feels a lot better and is much easier to use.
What do you think? Have any of you had any ER experiences? Is this normal?
**Small after thought. The pain shot that they gave me for my back, dilaudid, made me VERY sick. Within 20 minutes I was getting hot flashes and I began to strip everything that I could .... it was SO HOT! It only made me throw up twice, but I am pretty sure I would rather have put up with the pain than have that shot given ever again.
Anyway, I was going through the NPPR (Nurse Practitioners Prescribing Reference) and happened upon Dilaudid. It made me burst out laughing when I read this:
(paraphrased) "Warning: Use extreme caution with head trauma/injury"
After everything else that had happened, I couldn't help but laugh... seeing as they never checked my head. :)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I've never spent time in a hospital for myself. Growing up, it was always my brother and sister who spent most of their time in and out of hospitals. They had the charts, and the doctors, and the medications. Not me.
After falling 10 - 14 feet off of the cliff, Jason was telling me we should go into the ER, but after "thinking" it through, I told him we needed to just go home, let the shock wear off, and then see if we still needed to go. How stupid would it be to rush in there all hyped up, and end up not needing anything more than a band-aide? Rash decisions don't work.
So we went home. I sat down on the couch and painstakingly began to try to move my left toes. After putting all of my brainpower on them, I managed to make them twitch ever-so-slightly. But that was it. As the shock started to wear off, the pain started to move in.
I couldn't sit still. The pain in my back was terrible; there was no comfortable position to sit. After about 5 minutes, we decided to get back into the car and go to Urgent Care.
I tried to stand up, but I couldn't make my muscles obey. Jason bent down to pick me up, and it was too much to bear. I started crying and begging him to put me down. Just let me die right here, I don't care!
He finally got me into the car, and we made our way to St Mary's Urgent Care ... to find that it was 3:56 pm and they close at 4:00.
So Jason turned the car around and went to the General ER.
Due to the pain in my back, I was unable to get into the building on my own ... so Jason went inside to get me a wheelchair (which I wanted to object to, but I honestly couldn't walk on my own). We checked in, described what happened, and they got me into a bed very quickly (we were the only ones in there). I told them my worst pain was my lower back, followed by my foot followed by everything else.
They poked my back, said I was ok, and then gave me a pain killer shot. At this point, the Doctor comes in to stitch up my nose. He cleaned out the hole, began the freezing, and then waits for me as I feel my head. I was covered in dust and blood, and asked Jason to try to get the big clump of dirt out of my hair that I was feeling.
He let out a small exclamation when he found that the "dirt" was actually a gash in my skull. The blood had set up to be the big bump I was feeling. The doctor very calmly looks over, says "Well, that will need a staple" and continues in on his work.
Now that I have had time to think about it, I am having a couple of issues/concerns with how I was treated... not for myself, per say, but if I were to have brought in someone else (my sister, a child etc...) I would have found some things unacceptable. I have also shared this story with a few of my closer friends who know how hospitals work and they have told me that it was not how I should have been seen.
They never addressed my severe back pain except to give me the pain shot. They didn't offer a CT Scan, ask if I wanted one, feel my spine ... nothing. (They also didn't offer one for my head)
They didn't check my head... at all. I was in the final stages of my visit, getting stitched up, when I was the one who had to find the hole in my head. Personally, I would think that if someone comes in after falling 10 - 14 feet, you would at the very least check their skull?
Although they put wet towels on a couple of my cuts and scrapes, that is all they did. They didn't try to clean them out or treat them in any other way. They didn't even tell me how I should take care of it. When I asked, I was told to soak in a tub. (Which I ended up unable to do from the severe pain in my back:) )
No discharge instructions were gone over with me. Which .... I should have read more carefully myself, but when I did I was confused between what I had been told and what I was reading.
If it was my child/friend/relative .... I don't know. I would have found this to have been a very unhelpful visit.
3 days after I fell I went to the orthopedics office (at St Marys) for a follow up visit. Jason and I are sitting in the room with him going over the xrays that we had sent over from the General... and he is looking, and looking .... zooming in and zooming out ... and asks again what the doctor said about my foot. I relayed the conversation almost verbatim:
Doctor: *Showing me a skeleton foot* You see these three bones here? They are broken
Me: Broken? Are you SURE?
Doctor: Yes. Broken.
Me: Could they just be fractured?
Doctor: No, they are broken
Me: Cracked?
Doctor: Broken ....
Me: Fine ....
The orthopedic PA looked confused and said he couldn't find any evidence of a break on the xrays and had no idea what the doctor was looking at. He even took them out to get a second opinion from the main orthopedist. I was floored. Seriously? How can that even be possible?
Luckily, he changed out my splint that was made for me during my ER visit (the way that the ER made it was rubbing a spot on my heel raw... I still have a pressure blister that hurts!) and put me in a walking cast boot. It already feels a lot better and is much easier to use.
What do you think? Have any of you had any ER experiences? Is this normal?
**Small after thought. The pain shot that they gave me for my back, dilaudid, made me VERY sick. Within 20 minutes I was getting hot flashes and I began to strip everything that I could .... it was SO HOT! It only made me throw up twice, but I am pretty sure I would rather have put up with the pain than have that shot given ever again.
Anyway, I was going through the NPPR (Nurse Practitioners Prescribing Reference) and happened upon Dilaudid. It made me burst out laughing when I read this:
(paraphrased) "Warning: Use extreme caution with head trauma/injury"
After everything else that had happened, I couldn't help but laugh... seeing as they never checked my head. :)
