“Somebody help me. I’m going to die” the young woman on the stretcher screamed. She had just been wheeled into the Emergency Room of a local hospital. She then started sobbing quite loudly. She wasn’t the first person I heard in the ER screaming they were dying. I heard a dozen of them when I was in the ER from 5 PM until 12:30 AM last Friday. Many of those stretchers had patients who weren’t saying anything. That is because they had arrived wearing some kind of portable respirator. As one ambulance pulled out another was arriving. It was as if they were an assembly line.
I really didn’t want my 91-year-old father in an ER full of Covid patients. My brother stopped at dad’s house and found he had fallen. Dad now had slurred speech and difficulty breathing. My brother phoned me with the news. After I arrived, we decide to call 911. They promptly arrived and did a great job of persuading my stubborn dad that he needed to go to the Emergency Room.
I don’t know the last time I have been in a place as stressful as that ER. Everyone in the unit was required to wear a mask. I always travel with one in my pocket. My father was put on a bed in the hallway because there were no empty rooms. I was sitting in a chair near the end of his bed. A nursing aide stood next to me holding a blanket. Housekeeping staff showed up and took it from her. As they took it the aide said, “Possible Covid.” I heard the word Covid, over and over that night. It was really adding to my stress. More stressful was the guy who kept parking his wheelchair next to the chair I was sitting in. He was probably in his early seventies. He wore a flannel shirt and a camouflage NRA ball cap. He had a scraggly sparse gray beard and a gray pony tail hanging out the back of his cap. He did not have a mask on. A nurse handed him a mask and told him to put it on. He held up two he already had. He explained that both security guards had had already given him masks. He said the nurse could shove it because he wasn’t wearing any damn mask. He kept wheeling around the place getting in the way of nurses and constantly arriving ambulance crews. A nurse told him that he was in the way. He loudly yelled, “I don’t give a shit.” He then again parked next to me. It was decided that something needed to be done with him. He was sent to the bathroom to fill a cup for a urine specimen. He rolled out of the bathroom proclaiming, “Who wanted this cup of piss?” They soon gave him some antibiotics, explained how to use them and away he rolled out the door.
A 35 year-old guy entered the emergency room next. He had washed down a large dose of his depression meds with a huge amount of wine. A doctor asked him if he drinks often. He said only at Pittsburgh Steeler and Pens games. A social worker came to talk to him. She suggested a rehab place for him and was describing it. It all sounded good to him until she hit the last detail. That was the fact that it was a non-smoking environment. He claimed that was a deal breaker. She asked if he smoked tobacco. He replied, “Among other things.” His aunt had come in with him and was now shaking her head. He asked her why his mother had not brought him in. The aunt replied, ‘She didn’t think you’d want her here and frankly she is tired of this.”
My dad threw up three times and had to go to the bathroom three times. The nurses were patient with him and were doing their best. I asked a nurse if the ER was always this insane. She replied, ‘Sometimes it’s worse.” She also explained that only three nurses were in the unit for the night.
At the nurse’s station the phone kept ringing. A nurse was shaking her head after one call. She told another nurse, “A caller wanted to know if she should come in with pink eye. Pink eye, dang. Would you want to venture into a Covid pandemic area with something as minor as pink eye?” The other nurse laughed and quickly ran to one of the rooms because a buzzer was going off. There are several rooms in the ER and all have a glass sliding door on them.
An ambulance crew now brought in a middle-age woman on a stretcher. She had a ring on every finger, a nose ring and several earrings in each ear. She looked like a walking jewelry box. She had fallen and they were taking her for a head ex-ray. They told her they had to remove her earrings and recent nose ring. They took out the earrings but she refused to take out the nose ring. Her husband was pleading with her. Another nurse with a diamond in her nose came over. She told the woman she recently got her nose jewelry also. She took it out and put it back in. This convinced the jewelry box woman to take her own out.
The ambulance team brought in a woman screaming for help. She claimed her gall bladder was attacking her. A nurse was trying to calm her but she screamed for twenty minutes. She then climbed off the stretcher and calmly stood at the desk. She then told a sitting nurse, “I’m not going to be here all night.” Sitting nearby I wanted to tell her I had already been there six hours.
The ambulance crews tried to hang around and help the nurses. Most could only help for ten minutes or so until another 911 call. I was feeling very sorry for the nursing staff that was on a twelve hour shift. The midnight nurse crew had just arrived. They were also understaffed and hurrying about. A nurse was on the phone trying to get a couple of patients transferred to other area hospitals. She was told they were all packed and no beds were available. At 12:30 AM a nurse told me I might as well leave as they would keep my father in the hall until a bed opened up. I felt I was in the way as the ambulance crews were back to full assembly line mode. I left very stressed out and really grateful for the wonderful job the nurses and ambulance crews were doing. As I exited the ER door a car quickly pulled up outside the doors. A man and woman got out screaming and fighting angrily with each other. The midnight shift was in for another wild ride. I arrived home exhausted showered and went to bed.
The next morning I went back to the hospital and dad was in a room with another patient. He is undergoing further testing. On my ride home I tuned into KDKA a Pittsburgh talk radio station. Callers were arguing with the host. Caller after caller stated that hospitals are empty as Covid is a hoax, that Covid was a “plandemic” by the Democrats, or that vaccines don’t work.
I just wish that one of those idiot callers would have experienced the seven hours I just spent in a hospital ER. Better yet, I wish they had to do one of the nurse’s twelve hour shifts. I only wrote about a small percent of the madness I saw in that ER. Bless these healthcare workers who are up against Covid deniers on top of the daily madness they face. Thank God for these heroes.
Elecpencil 