A Day With A Doctor
A Day with a Doctor
As I pulled into the parking lot of Alamance Regional Medical Center grimacing in pain I knew it would be a bad day. Six hours earlier I was enjoying a medium rare hamburger at Red Robin not knowing violent vomiting and diarrhea would ensue. Upon entering through the sliding glass doors, I was consumed by fresh oxygen, chilling air conditioning, and smells of sterilization. “When is my child gonna see somebody? We’ve been waiting here 5 hours and your letting people back there, who just got here”. At that point, I really did know, it was going be a long day.
After four hours of waiting in triage, filling out way too much paperwork, getting hassled for doing it incorrectly, and all the while trying unsuccessfully not to vomit out of both ends, my name was called. A short while later a nurse brings me to room #8 and says “sir I need to get you undressed and into a gown, and I’ll need to get your history”. Now, a guy like me would normally take that statement in a different context than appropriate. But, in this case, I just vomited profusely again. My door was open, and a person in a long white coat sitting in a desk hears me retching and yells out orders to the nurse. “Get a large bore IV, start two liters of normal saline, Zofran, get a comprehensive metabolic panel and a lipase in case he is a drinker”. Meanwhile, the doctor is on the phone and looking at a computer looking at my “chief complaint and vital signs”. Never once, did she make eye-contact with me. The nurse jabs my arm with what she calls an “18 gage needle”. She starts the fluid and chills immediately hit me from the solution going in my arm. She gave me medication that helped me stop vomiting, but made me feel numb all over. As the nurse was leaving she explained to me that she would leave the door open in case I started to vomit again.
About a half an hour later my doctor sticks her head in the room and says...
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