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Emergency Room From Hell

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There is a local emergency room that actually scares me.  I’m not the only one- whenever I mention its name to someone (even my new oncologist who works for the same organization) the reaction is usually “Oh, I know what you mean. I/my brother/mom/dad/friend/ etc went there and almost killed me/them.”  Their posted patient satisfaction percentages have been in the %60 range. That is BAD.  Hospitals run on patient satisfaction surveys (which is a whole other nightmare for healthcare professionals).  Reputations are hard to fix.  What is so bizarre is that the rest of the hospital is fine, or at least survivable. I’ve had many outpatient tests, a couple of admissions from the ER, and also a knee replacement at the same place, and the staff was good.  I did have some complications after the knee replacement that were figured out a bit late, but nothing as bad as their ER.

One time when I was admitted, I had a nurse tell me that I needed to go home.  At the time, I was on a heart monitor because my heart rate had dropped into the 30s and was being erratic. But she looked familiar- I think she was one of the hags from the ER who was working on the cardiac floor.  I never could figure out how nurses could be so nasty.  I’ve had some unlikable patients, and some that were really unpleasant to deal with- but I’d never be inhumane or callously disregard their dignity.

I’ve got multiple chronic illnesses, and I’ve been an RN since 1985.  I’m on disability, but I keep my license current, and I know the appropriate manner in which to speak to and deal with patients. I’ve been a staff nurse, supervisor, charge nurse, and department head.  I’ve also been sent to various ERs over the years, though this scary one has been the worst, hands down.  I was often sent there from work, unconscious, either from being post-ictal (what happens after seizures when people sleep very deeply) or my blood pressure bottomed out from my autonomic nervous system not working right (dysautonomia), and I’d pass out.

Other times, someone called 911 when they were either with me, or on the phone with me, and they could tell something wasn’t right (turned out I had some medication interactions that weren’t figured out for quite a while that contributed to some of the blood pressure problems).  I was labelled a ‘frequent flyer’, which is an extremely derogatory term given to patients who generally don’t have primary doctors and are often non-compliant. Neither of those applied to me. I saw my regular doctor monthly, and all blood levels of anticonvulsants were always therapeutic. I’m on disability because my seizures are not controlled. I’ve had testing done to see if part of my brain could be removed to stop the seizures, and that turned out not to be possible without causing more damage than it could help.  I’m not some joke patient who shows up for the heck of it (I’ve been accused of being bored, and using the ER for entertainment at the bad one).

But, the nurses and doctors at this ER didn’t care about me as a human at all. They never asked about regular doctor visits.  I was told I was a ‘wasted bed’ because I’d been brought in with seizures.  I was told that it was highly unlikely that I was compliant with anything.  They didn’t understand- or even try to find out- what I was really like as a patient- when I said anything that contradicted their assumptions, it was ignored. They made their assumptions and treated me as the parasite they thought I was.  The dysautonomia isn’t all that common as a given diagnosis.  It causes extremes in blood pressure and heart rates (and for me, heat and pain are major triggers).  My blood pressure would drop to a dangerous level at home  and per my primary doctor’s instructions, I would call 911 when it got below 70/50.  It was often much lower, and the lowest I know it to have gone is 44/16 during a tilt table test.  Even with objective symptoms, I was treated like a head case.

I rarely remember getting to the ER.  I had learned that when I woke up and saw the drop ceilings and bright lights and equipment, I was in the ER.  One night I woke up and a doctor was counting my pills from medication bottles EMS had brought from my apartment when a neighbor called them after I passed out in her apartment.  I asked him what he was doing, and he asked if I’d overdosed. I said definitely not- and asked what happened. It had taken 4 bags of IV fluids to get my blood pressure up to 80 systolic, and the nurses were getting me ready to go to ICU for dopamine (a resuscitative drug to maintain blood pressure). I ended up not needing it, since I managed to stay around 80 systolic, and I was making sense once I regained consciousness. But in the preparation to send me to ICU, a urinary catheter was inserted.  The balloon that keeps it inside was inflated before it got all the way into my bladder, and stretched my internal sphincter (what keeps the urine in the bladder) and upper urethra…talk about pain. I told the nurse it wasn’t all the way in, and she turned to leave the room without saying a word. I pushed it in the rest of the way myself.

Another time, I had just ‘come to’ and saw a doctor walking past the stretcher. I was still groggy, and he didn’t say anything to me, so I didn’t talk to him. I didn’t know what he wanted (or for sure that he was even a doctor for that matter- some guy in a white coat). He proceeded to insert a breathing tube into my airway- something that isn’t done without someone to suction in case the patient vomits, some paralytic drugs to dull the gag reflex (to prevent vomiting) and calm the patient IF they need to be intubated, and without asking the patient if they are awake and know what is going on. I have no idea why he wanted to intubate me (which more than likely would have landed me on a ventilator). He started putting the metal blade of the laryngoscope down my throat (has a light on it to see where to put the tube), and then the tube, which did trigger my gag reflex and I started to throw up. I turned my head to the right to let the puke fall out, and the metal blade (still down my throat) nicked my right tonsil, and it started bleeding. A nurse came in (finally) and since I was trying to breathe and reflexively trying to get the stuff out of my mouth and airway, they tied me down.  The doctor finally took the stuff out of my mouth and asked if I’d OD’d… I said “No!”.  He said “That’s all you had to say.” I couldn’t believe it… that was all HE had to ask !  I didn’t even know why I was there (still don’t), and it was HIS job to assess me before attempting to put in an endotracheal tube. It could be that because he assumed I’d OD’d that they were going to pump my stomach, and the ET tube was part of keeping my airway safe. But, nobody said anything to me. My medical record would have shown other ER visits with similar symptoms and ‘clean’ drug screens… There was one nurse who was helping me get cleaned up after the throwing up who was kind. She had a daughter with seizures and understood the post-ictal period.  I was just mortified.

I never got on the call light (when I could reach it), and would undo the monitors myself if I had to go to the bathroom, and put myself back on the monitors when I got back. I never asked for pain meds. I didn’t ask for anything.  I was never there for psychiatric reasons (patients who are not thought of well in most medical facilities, mostly from lack of knowledge and exposure to the various disorders). And yet I was treated like I was a total pain in the butt and whack job.

When someone comes out of seizures, there is generally a period of time when they are either extremely sleepy (and even coma-like) or mildly confused for a little while. Not everyone ‘comes to’ the same way. Not everyone has ‘TV seizures’.  I have complex partial seizures that turn into generalized seizures at times (when I end up out cold the worst).  When I come to, I can hear things first, and then gradually get back up to speed- but sometimes my response time is slow.  The nurses at this ER from hell didn’t like that, so they’d double team me and put TWO  ammonia inhalants under my nose and hold them there as I gasped for air.  I was awake and knew what they were doing- but I wasn’t ‘all the way back’, so my response time was too slow for them- so they assumed I was a psych case being difficult. Or faking.  They were punitive.

When Social Security was reviewing my disability paperwork, they had over 1000 pages of medical documentation over the previous 7 years, including abnormal EEGs (brain wave tests used to help diagnose seizures/epilepsy) and blood pressure crashes.  But the nurses at that ER thought I was a nut job.  I was horrified that SO many nurses like that exist.  When I’d worked in Texas for 17 years before returning to Illinois, I worked with great nurses. Even if someone wasn’t necessarily going to be a ‘friend’ outside of work, I never saw cruelty or pure meanness.  We had a lot of wild shifts at work- and I never saw one of my coworkers in Texas act like those hostile nurses in that one ER.  I’d worked in another hospital in this town (pediatrics) and then a nursing home- and those nurses were also good to their patients.  But the nurses in that ER of the religiously-affiliated hospital were downright nasty. The docs weren’t much better.

When I was taken in for very low blood sugar one time, they got my blood sugar up with two ‘amps’ of D50 (sugar solution given IV), and then called a cab.  The nurse told me that it would be about 45 minutes until the cab got there, and I should wait in the waiting room. Basic treatment of hypoglycemia instructs people to eat a snack with protein and fat to prevent blood pressure from crashing again once the D50 ‘wears off’, unless their next meal is within the next 30 minutes.  I was sent to the waiting room with nothing (usually a half a sandwich, or peanut butter and crackers is standard hospital fare for low blood sugar after it’s brought back up).  Fortunately, I had my purse with some change for vending machines, and my own blood sugar monitor.  Within a few minutes, I could feel my blood sugar dropping even though I’d gotten a bag of peanuts from the machine.  I tried Coke, and it was still dropping. When I told the person at the triage window, she told me I’d already been treated, and if a nurse had time she’d come and talk to me.  I was safer on my own.

There had been a weird period of time when I was having episodes that were much like the autonomic disorder, and a bit like seizures, but not quite. I had been in the ER (per home health instructions) several times in one month. One night, I was having more trouble with my blood pressure, and went to the ER. The doctor actually told me I’d been there too much that month, and he wasn’t going to do anything. I asked if they could at least check my blood pressure again (it had come up somewhat from being moved from the ambulance stretcher to the ER gurney), and he refused to tell the nurse to simply push the button to do another BP reading.  He never got within 5 feet of me.  Ten days later, I had severe chest pain, and ended up going to another ER (per the instructions of my doctor’s nurse, who was affiliated with the scary place), and it was discovered that I had multiple blood clots in my right lung (all three lobes) that were pushing into the base of my heart, causing EKG changes that showed my heart wasn’t getting enough oxygen (just from the pressure of the junk in my lung).  The clots were of various ages- acute, subacute, and chronic- so would have been present during the time when the doctor negligently blew me off. He could have killed me with that decision.

I’ve written to the hospital with the creepy ER, and got the standard ‘we aim to give the best possible care’ letters. My own doctor was told by one of the few nice doctors at the bad ER that he’d witnessed how I’d been treated. It wasn’t just me being snarky.  My doctor believed me. The ‘new’ ER saved my life.  I had asked the doc at the ‘good place’ that night the pulmonary emboli were found if I could go home and get a few things since I was being admitted for a few days, and she told me she didn’t think I’d live that long; the next night I was in ICU getting clot-busting drugs when I started having the same pain again.  I’d driven myself to the ER… not recommended.

For those in nursing school, consider this. You aren’t going to understand everything about everybody you encounter as a nurse. But just because YOU don’t get it doesn’t mean it’s OK to take out your lack of knowledge on the patient,  who could very well teach you something.  Cruelty during urgent/unstable medical situations  is never justified.  And it’s not something that can be ‘fixed’ later. You represent where you work, and your profession.  It’s not about you when you’re assigned to take care of someone.



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