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| Emergency |
Its Sunday morning about 9 and I gotta go. I start to urinate and its looks like pure blood. I think my bus is about to hit me. So I get into my car and drive to Emergency. I park in the tow-away zone so you can tell I think its serious. I get in a line, I'm 3rd and I give information, including my phone number, and other important stuff. Then I go sit down . After a while someone with a clipboard comes out, takes me to a little side room and starts asking questions. She takes my pressure and, you know the routine. I'm back in a waiting chair, its now about 12:30 when a guy calls my name takes me into another small room. He asks more questions and says ok, a nurse will come for me. I gotta go again but I don't want to scare myself, like I did this morning. A nurse comes and takes me to a closet with a lay down table and gives me a pecan to pee into. Next comes the doctor who feels around and says,
"You have an infection." She gets someone to take the now full pecan for analysis and then leaves. After about 5 minutes I realize I don't have my ipod or cel phone and you know where my car is parked. So I walk out of emergency, get in the car and when I get home the phone is ringing, I answer and its this very nice doctor who says,
"Mr Kaufman you have a bad infection, why did you leave?" I say,
"I thought you forgot about me." ('a fib', I thought I could get back before anyone noticed.)
She says, "No, and its important that you come back, right now." I get into the car and park in a safe area near emergency and walk back in. This time they're waiting for me. I get express handling and the next thing you know I'm on one of those 1 1/2 feet wide lay down bed type stretchers on wheels, with a long steel pole beside my head and what looks like a coat hanger at the top. There's a bag of 'water like' stuff hanging at the top of the coat hanger and its connected to me through an intravenous needle. They park me in the hallway saying all the rooms are filled. Everyone is nice and asking more questions and writing down stuff and I notice its now after 5 and I haven't had anything to eat. I try to make a call but the cel wont work because of electrical interference or something, So I ask a nurse, and she says you're going to a room in the hospital and it'll have a phone. The room has 2 beds and a big clock. Its 6:25 and I find out delivery of food trays end before 6. I don't want to upset anyone but I do tell a nurse's aid I missed supper. So she scrounges up an unused tray. Everything is dried out and the chicken looks like it died on the way to being killed. But the apple juice and roll were fine. I take out my ipod and start reading Ben Franklin again. Shit! I forgot the chargers. About 15 minutes later it looks like I.m getting company. Turns out its Stanley who goes from a wheel chair into the bed with very much needed assistance. In other words this guy is sick. He starts talking in a very loud voice so I put my hearing aid on the tray by the bed. Uh uh, doesn't work at all., Stanley is talking, I mean
loud. I can still hear him clearly and I think they can easily hear him in the hall. I say to the nurse who is trying to make him comfortable, nurse will you tell Stanley I'm on to him and it ain't gonna work.
Stanley says, "What?"
I say, "If you think you can get me to ask to have you taken out of the room so you can eventually get a room to yourself, forget it, unless you have something to bribe me with. Talk as loud as you like cause I ain't gonna do it." He tells me he has 2 grown children who live in Philadelphia and Illinois and his wife divorced him. I ask why she did that and he says,
"She said I was a loser."
I say, "Stanley, forget that, Stanley, that ain't the real reason she divorced you."
He says, "you don't think so?"
I say, " No, if I was your wife I'd divorce you because you talk so
freakin loud."
The nurse who is making a mess of my free arm getting blood, almost breaks the needle. I say to Stanley, "Hold on, there's serious stuff going on here." (A curtain is between us) and I say to the nurse,
Why don’t you just get me a pecan, you'll get all the blood you need"
She looks at my food tray and says you didn't eat anything. I say,
"Tell the truth, does that look like chicken?" She disappears and a little later when she has to take more tests she quietly puts some individually wrapped graham crackers on my tray. Stanley says,
"My doctor told me I only have 5 days to live."
I say, "What? When was that?"
He says, "Thursday."
I say,
"Stanley I think you should get another doctor."
He says, "Are you just kidding?"
I say, "Well yes and no."
He says "I'm gonna do it, get a 2nd opinion."
I tell him some true stories, like about an uncle whose doctor told him he had 6 months to live and many years later he read in the paper the doctor had died. And anyway I don't think its true because if it was they wouldn't put you in a room with me, just because you talk so freaking loud. Tuesday nite I say, "Stanley I'm leaving tomorrow."
He says, "They told you already?"
And I say, "No I'm waiting for the nurse so I can tell her now."
"So how do you know."
"Because the Heat game is Thursday and anyway that will make it a week for you and I don't have to worry about you anymore because then, for sure your doctor made a mistake. We just don't know how big. And as for me they're just trying to find a reason to keep me in the hospital because they need customers." Wednesday the nurse comes in and I don't like the look in her eyes.
"What?"
She says, "your sugar number is low."
"Ain't that good? What is it?"
"54, we have to give you some medication to bring it up".
I say, "No you don't. Just don't give me any medication at all, and it'll go up by itself. I'm taking medication to bring it down. You must have given me too much". She looks back a few pages on the chart and says,
"You might be right. How much do you take at home?"
"Two and a half of what ever the hell it is per pill" and she says, "Um hm we gave you 5s."
A little later I go over to say goodbye.
"Stanley, now you can get your own room, just keep talking that loud, but I have a confession."
"What's that."
"Remember when you came in and asked the nurse's aid to put 44 on your TV?"
"Yes."
"I knew you meant Fox channel and I also knew the right number."
"So why didn't you tell me?"
"Because Stanley, I don't like that channel and you didn't ask me."
We wished good luck and said good bye.
