If an old farmer says “it hurts a bit” then they’re about to die and need an ER
Or if they came in before finishing what they were doing.
Yep lol reminds me of a story my dad told me. He was working on a building and adding the interior siding (it’s since been converted into a hog pen) when he smashed his thumb bad with a hammer. He decided that it was a good time to take a quick lunch break after wrapping up his thumb before driving to the hospital
My grandpa, still with us and thinking clearly at 90, grew up working the family farm. Got his hand caught in a combine mangled his hand. They of course had a 45 minute drive to the nearest surgeon, but it “wasn’t that bad” until about 20 minutes into the drive.
Dude has outlived cancer, aggressive infections, smoking for 30 years, and the loss of his first wife. Probably the most resilient mofo I know.
Ah yes, farming equipment. The kind of machines thats almost made to mangle humans.
Did he get to keep the hand?
Yes! By some miracle the only permanent damage was his index finger, it could no longer extend, and it was forever weaker. I wish I could see an x ray of what it looked like as primitive as the machines were then.
My dad got his hand caught in a hay conveyor. Two of the tines caught the back of his hand and made two gouges a couple inches apart.
It was the only time I’d ever heard him say “Ow.”
A quart of whiskey and 5 minute smoke break, they’ll be fine.
Meanwhile the top comment is complaining about how people’s pain reactions are gauged differently.
I watched a video of a farmhand getting hit by a field truck and he got up and went back to work. They’re built different.
Ah yes. Many years ago before I was born, the guy who my was married to came home and complained about a bit of a painfull back. My mom made him drive to the hospital where he told them what hat happend. They told him to stand completely still and put a neck brace on him and made him sit in a wheelchair where he passed out. When he woke up half his body (left side I think) wa paralyzed.
It turns out he had fall off the roof of a barn and landed flat on his back on the fully extended ladder, breaking his back, and passed out and had lost his memory until he saw his work wan, with his name on it. He had then driven himself back home, before my mom insisted that he needed to go to the hospital, “just to have him checked out”.
He still suffers daily from it, but he somehow managed to get full functionally of his body back, but never was able to work full time in trade work.
Long story short, Go. To. The. Hospital!
Your last line there. I get it and I agree, but for a lot of people without insurance it’s like having to choose between bodily destruction and financial destruction
I feel so awful some people have to choose. This dude just didn’t wanna go. We go socialized health care here rho
Choose financial. You live.
Use bankruptcy. There’s a reason for it.
Make payment plans. If you’re truly poor, you basically pay $30 a month for like 20 years and it’s discharged.
It’s very scary when it’s a meme and people don’t know their options since it’s often gatekeeped.
Hospitals also offer financial assistance and payment plans if you ask. Believe it or not, hospitals want you to be able to pay. If you can’t pay, that means they don’t get paid. Though, sometimes (this is NOT a guarantee), they may waive the bill altogether if you apply for financial assistance.
What if you have to choose between your health and your child’s going to college?
A healthcare system that’s not universal is so fucked up. It can’t be that it’s kept for people with money.
That $30 is money you wouldn’t have had in a country with universal healthcare. The tax has to come from somewhere.
You wouldn’t need the 30€ in the first place if you’ve had a universal health care… Of course the money has to come from somewhere. What if you got sick again? Or someone if your family got sick again? You’re fucked up.
The $30 all goes to the same bill FYI.
All that medical debt gets wrapped into a single bill. You pay $30x12x20 and it’s gone. It takes work to get there though.
And you missed the point of saying that $30 is money you wouldn’t have had if we enacted universal health care. It’s not going to come without everyone losing the equivalent of their premium in extra taxes anyway. The benefit is when people need to go extra times.
It’s not the same. It’s about social security. I pay high tax now with high amount of money for universal health care in my country, and I’m sure I would never ever have to spent that much money in my whole life for my health care or my family (I spent about 850€ per month only for health insurance). Most people pay less than that and that’s okay. It’s about the wealthy subsidizing the less wealthy.
Sure I can survive if I put everything to my saving. I would be able to pay the bill (I think, at least).
I don’t have to worry about money at all if anyone of us got sick.
If I die my family gets paid, and my problems are over. Even losing a major limb is a better option than the costs of prevention.
Really good life insurance is really cheap. Nothing makes health care affordable in the US, except leaving the US.
Losing a major limb is 99.9% of the time never better than keeping the limb. Despite how many people say to the contrary.
Not only does it put many hands on trades into another learning curve, sometimes it completely stops your career. Residual pain from surgery often isn’t nearly as bad as phantom limb issues too.
With disability I could move out of the country and maybe afford actual medical care. Again, life insurance is WAY cheaper than health insurance, and gives partial payment for disability. At that point, I don’t care about losing my career, I’m getting paid for life. The only question I really have right now, is if I’m going to be totally or only partially blind.
My condolences mate. Best of luck throughout the process and whatever you decide to go with.
only in murica
Yeah I’ve lived this…
Years ago I had a rash under my arm that wouldn’t go away, at first I thought it was just because I had swapped deodorant or I switched back, then I assumed it was now just aggravated because I was spraying stuff on a rash so stopped and was putting cream on it, after about 3-4 weeks it had spread around to my back and the wife saw it when I hopped out of the shower one night and told me to go to the doctor’s. I was like yeah guess I should, another week passed and she asked me to meet her at the shops after work, I arrive and she had booked me a doctor’s appointment… As soon as I took my shirt off the doctor gasped and said I had to go to ER immediately, I stupidly went home and had a shower first then went to ER, handed them the letter from the Dr and skipped the whole queue, triage nurse is slipping a cannula in and putting me on penicillin while I’m still being checked in… ended up in hospital for 5 weeks with a severe case of cellulitis so bad they brought the medical students passed me every morning…
Thing is I felt fine the whole time, no pain at all, didn’t feel sick and the whole time they’re telling me it’s life threatening…
Same thing happened to me but I was 11yo. They told my parents another week and I could have died.
I had doctors and nurses checking on me like ever 30m and I felt fine.
Same, my partner nearly died around the same age from a tiny infected glass cut that developed cellulitis.
I think there might be something about the age of 11, because I had the exact same thing at the exact same age.
that sounds terrifying - did they tell you how close you were to being too late?
Honestly wasn’t terrifying because I felt fine and no they never told me that just that it was serious. The worst part of the whole experience for me was my are had to be elevated the whole time and that meant every second… I had to walk around with this pole on wheels with a sling to keep it up even in the toilet or shower and even sleeping it had to be straight up
Unless you are either female, a minority, young, or have chronic pain in which case any mention of pain you have, no matter how extreme, is considered a drug seeking attempt.
The ER will diagnose people based on their race, sex, gender, and age before they’ll diagnose you based on your symptoms. It doesn’t matter how much you are suffering, how much pain you are in, or how close you are to killing yourself because you can’t take it anymore. ER doctors have no empathy unless you fit a certain demographic.
I hurt my back during training and since it really started hurting after-hours I went to the local ER. The same ER all of the serious training incidents go to.
The ER doc eventually said “this seems like drug seeking behavior”.
To which I responded. “No shit. I didn’t come in here for a hug. I need muscle relaxers and pain meds so I can fake it through PT in the morning.”
Which hilariously worked? He gave me what I needed and I left.
As a former heroin addict (clean for a decade at least) I am terrified to be treated that way.
I’ve made it clear to anyone with any decision making ability in my life that unless they say, “he’s dying, there’s no hope.” they are to refuse opioids even if I’m begging and pleading.
Doctors don’t know I feel that strongly about it, but they can pull up my chart and see that I’ve been a junkie in my life. I hate that.
My son wears a medical bracelet that says no opioids except for end of life palliative care.
He fought too long and too hard to get sucked back into addiction.
I’m happy for you; you have beaten addiction into the past and that’s where it’s going to stay.
Thank you, I really appreciate the comment.
I’m glad your son is doing well.
The biggest thing I took away from recovery is when they said, “people, places, and things”. That was everything and it didn’t sink in until I spent time going to groups.
I always knew when someone was going to make it. They had support. You are everything in your son’s world and recovery whether you know it or not.
The people who couldn’t get away, the ones who died, their whole family was infested and plagued with addiction.
I heard someone in his early 20s, “I got out of jail two months ago. I did good until last week. I was helping my mom move and she crushed up a pill on the counter. I asked her nicely to please keep it away from me. “Oh, you done forgot where you came from. Mr. High and mighty don’t want me doing what he did for the last 5 years in front him.” I fucked up. I made a call later that day. I’m going to rehab next week.”
We had a moment of silence for him when he overdosed a few months down the road.
I have a friend who just fucked up a decade sober. He has a pace maker from his addiction and he’s only 42. He made it sober longer than anyone else I knew who kept company who still used. He couldn’t leave friends hanging and now he’s paying for it. I have hope that he’ll pull it off because he made it so long before. He’s been to rehab recently and they had to ship him to a hospital because of his heart. He’s heading to a rehab that is better equipped to deal with his health issues soon. He’s in love with a junkie though, and she’s beautiful, so I hope she gets clean or he gets away from her.
I am so lucky. My mother doesn’t even drink. She’s a damn good part of my support system. My uncle kept me employed and looked out for me while I got it together. It has been a huge privilege in my life to have him. The woman I’m with has no interest in drugs. She can’t even imagine me how I used to be.
It hurt walking away from people who had been so kind to me and kept me from being sick so many times, but I had to do it. I ignore them when they message me. Everyone in my life is sober. It’s literally the only way.
One of my closest friends, someone I spent every day with, I walked away from him. I told him, “When the dope is gone I’ll be around, I promise.” He cussed me, told me I was making an excuse so I didn’t have to deal with him. 5 years into my sobriety he called me and asked me if I meant it and if I’d help him. He actually got clean after 30 years on it. I got to sit with him and take care of him at the end of his life and that means the world to me, but if he hadn’t gotten away from it, I would be regretting not being there for him, but I’d know that I couldn’t have been.
I know you’re probably an expert looking out for your son at this point, but if he can stay away from users he won’t use again.
The groups seem like little cults to me, but for the people who make their life about the group, they usually don’t have anyone sober they can turn to outside of it. It isn’t for me because I have real support. They can make it with the support they find there.
Your son has real support in you, and that’s amazing. That’s everything.
I hope you never have to worry about him again. Take care.
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Happened to me when I was 18. I had severe Sun Poisoning (extreme allergic reaction to moderate sunburn) and not only was I inconceivably itchy, the pain I experienced was indescribable. Waves of pain so bad THROUGH MY ENTIRE BODY I could only scream and cry. I was shaking and incoherent. My mom was with me the whole day, and was the one who brought me to the hospital. Of course, with my behavior as extreme as it was, the hospital staff let me suffer very loudly in the emergency waiting room because they thought I was a drug addict. My mom, who has worked as a nurse, spent about an hour chewing people out left and right about the situation. I eventually got treated but that was probably the most traumatic experience I’ve gone through my whole life
Is that EPP? My partner’s childhood best friend has one of the worst EPP reactions known to medical literature. I can’t imagine anything that sounds half as bad.
I have this and this is maybe the first time I’ve heard of someone else with epp. I think mine is pretty mild, but it really sucks! I hate the sun!
Edit since I guess this is kinda relevant to discussion: I never had visible symptoms, just pain and extreme sensitivity to temperature /sun when it flares up, so until I was ~16 people told me I was making it up. Finally got a rash at one point and was able to get tests done and was diagnosed.
Our friend had a similar story to yours, they were told they were making it up despite the fact they were starting to die anytime they went out in the sun, it took multiple near death experiences for them to get diagnosed as a child. I’ve never run into anyone else with it in the UK but there is a community of expats with it in Rotterdam the Netherlands as they have one of the best Porphyria treatment and research centers in the world. Our friend emigration their a while ago for it and has been using the new implant that’s been developed and they’ve said it’s completely life changing - it doubles their exposure time and allows them to live a much more normal life. If you’d like to make contact with other people with it, feel free to DM me your email and I can pass it along.
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Please don’t pull an ‘all lives matter’ here. Women and minorities are systemically discriminated by the medical system as a whole. Patient outcomes are statistically better if you fit the correct demographic.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/racism-in-healthcare
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Dismissal of pain and drug seeking accusations are two sides of the same coin.
No one is ‘turning’ anything into an identity issue. You don’t get to say ‘I don’t see color’ and then pretend that systemic discrimination doesn’t exist.
Your lack of understanding of a real world problem doesn’t make it any less real for the rest of us. Please think about the relevance of your own experiences before invalidating others’.
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My mother in her last months was in terrible pain. She, an elderly white woman in Appalachia could not have her pain properly addressed. I had to threaten her care providers in order for her to have barely adequate pain management. “If you don’t see to this right now, I’m going to video her screaming in pain, put your name on it on YouTube and point every media outlet in the tri-state there.” It was literally the only thing that worked.
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It’s not a pact to discriminate, it’s that they’re a high traffic area that tries to quickly treat people through the path of least resistance.
That’s great if you have visible, obvious issues like a missing limb. If you have anything internal though, forget it. The bevy of tests they’ll need to determine anything will take multiple days, so as long as you can still walk with assistance they’ll do their best to shove you out the door and tell you to schedule an appointment with your doc, regardless of how much pain you’re in.
I hurt my knee and I couldn’t walk easily even with assistance. They did x-rays and determined it wasn’t broken and said I probably (and that word is important) just sprained it and I would be fine in a couple weeks. The hospital refused to sell me crutches, and when I said I needed them to walk, they told me I could walk just fine because it wasn’t broken. Several months later and I’m still not better and I’ve been told I probably tore a ligament and I might need surgery. Gee, maybe I wasn’t being a dramatic cry baby after all???
Lol, maybe your hospital is staffed purely by orthopedic doctors.
If you have anything internal though, forget it.
Sure thing. Just spent a 12h shift treating ‘internal’ stuff at the ER. But I guess we both rely on anecdotal evidence.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0196064423002676
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/interactive/2022/women-pain-gender-bias-doctors/
Individuals who are intersectional in groups that are under prioritized for health care have it the absolute worst.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13557858.2021.1899138
Interestingly I saw one study while pulling this up from 2009 that came to the conclusion that there isn’t a major disparity in pain treatment between races and genders, but I think we’ve learned a great deal about the social determinants of health since then, and these more recent studies and articles show the opposite.
It’s less to do with a pact, and more to do with ignorance. Most clinical signs are taught in north America on caucasian skin (though there’s a really neat clinical guide put out I think by St George’s university in the UK that I highly recommend to all health care providers- it’s called mind the gap and it’s free afaik). Additionally, cultural and language differences change how people raised in different cultures express pain. Finally, women’s health is probably 50 years behind where it should be because any pain to do with female reproductive organs (and by extension abdominal pain) is often written off even when it’s debilitating.
Add in those natural unconscious biases we carry as humans and no universal pact needed, discrimination happens anyway even with people who don’t realize they are doing it.
For anyone doubting these experiences, I am a US medical student, and implicit biases and racism are big topics we are taught and made aware of due to physicians profiling their patient whether intentionally or not.
This is especially common in the ER where many people without PCPs come in for issues that are generally handled by a PCP. One of the more difficult things that physicians struggle with is balancing time with the quality of care they provide to their patients. Profiling makes the “time” component easy, but obviously that results in very poor quality healthcare.
No one should be doubting people’s experiences of racism and discrimination in the ER and beyond. Doctors are people too, and the bigoted behavior you see in other professions are just as likely to appear with your doctor.
It’s nice to see that someone is going to be one of the good doctors.
I appreciate that, and I want to offer hopefully a more positive outlook. These topics are becoming standard courses in the US medical school curriculum, as in they have to be taught to medical students.
It won’t solve every problem, of course, but the curriculum is way more patient-oriented than it used to be instead of being a simple “solve disease” kind of curriculum, which is what most of the doctors you see today are taught with.
I rarely comment on lemmy, but I had to say something against the few people who were saying these experiences aren’t valid.
Discrimination is real, and don’t assume Doctors are perfect because they’re not. Of course be open-minded and don’t be antagonistic to the ones who are legitimately trying to help you, but if you feel your care wasn’t great, then that’s very likely a failure on the physician’s part.
That is really good news that it’s becoming standard. I sincerely hope the grueling hours don’t take its toll on you and that they’re working on that as well. Burnt out doctors shouldn’t be a thing.
I’m a medical student that is aiming for emergency medicine, and threads like these are a special kind of demoralizing. When I was working as an ER tech, there were a fair few times where aggressive or combative patients would only let me get anywhere near them for anything because I never showed any judgement or disdain. Not that I blame my coworkers. It’s hard to treat someone nicely after they fake having an overdose in the lobby and then assault one of the nurses after they “wake up” from the narcan.
I honestly think that most medical workers are a victim of the healthcare system and pharma drug pushing as much as the patients. If there was affordable healthcare and a focus on helping people live healthy lives, there wouldn’t be so much drama and life threatening decisions.
I know that the general public’s idea of what ERs are for doesn’t help. EMTALA doesn’t mean that everyone who comes into an ER will get treated for anything regardless of ability to pay. It’s that they’ll be treated and stabilized for any emergent medical condition, illness, or injury… And many people seem to have interesting ideas about what constitutes an “emergency”.
The presumption that every patient is someone who fakes an overdose until proven otherwise is precisely why so many people in this threat is suffering. We aren’t asking you to serve narcan on a silver platter to people who fakes an overdose. We’re just asking to be treated as humans, with empathy, without preconceptions about who we are or why we are at the ER based on our skin color, sex, age, and chronic medical conditions.
Trust us, we know what it’s like to feel demoralized at the ER. I’ve had enough close calls of neglecting life threatening conditions, enough of ER staff laughing off my pain, enough ER staff deliberately manhandling me and hurting my tender points to prove I’m ‘overreacting’, enough of waiting 6 hours only to be sent home with nothing and in more pain than I was to begin with, enough of being left to cry in pain for hours at the ER and being ridiculed for it. Many of us are demoralized to the point of fearing the ER and avoiding it even under life threatening circumstances, because going through another ER experience might be the tipping point to actually kill ourselves.
There is only so much suffering, pain, and psychological torture the human mind can endure. Most people in the ER have no idea how much chronic pain sufferers have at stake when going to the ER. I have had ER visits that left me more broken than being sexually assaulted as a teen. I trusted doctors, I trusted the hospital, and I trusted that I was in a safe space. Being painfully jabbed, mocked, laughed at, and told im lying and drug seeking were the last things I was expecting. Nothing will repair this breach of trust, because the stakes are too high. I cannot gamble away my physical and mental health for the sake of improving moral in ER staff. For you, at worse you become disillusioned with your career. For me, it’s my life that I’m risking.
He came in for an entirely unrelated complaint and faked the overdose to get taken back immediately. The only drug in his system at the time was meth. Literally every room was full except for the resuscitation bay where we took him, and we had to keep him there for almost 2 hours until we had somewhere to move him to. It was the biggest of the resuscitation bays we had, so if we had someone coming in that needed ECMO, we’d have been kind of fucked.
I wish we hadn’t had to deal with that guy. Every nurse in the department had minimum 5 patients, mostly high acuity, and his stunt backed up the department for an extra couple hours by pulling unnecessary attention. I much rather would have been helping the nice gentleman in the lobby who had been waiting 5 hours with chest pain and a cardiac history, or the sickle cell patient in pain crisis.
I don’t have a problem with drug seeking. Pain is horrible and substance use disorders are diseases, not moral failings. I do have a problem with attention seeking, malingering, and abuse or assault of staff. As a physician, I plan to treat pain appropriately with the necessary medications or therapies, and to treat abuse of my staff with extreme prejudice.
And an edit to add: a drug overdose is treated as the same level of emergency as a cardiac arrest. We don’t serve Narcan on a silver platter, we serve it via wide bore IV while getting set up for intubation and resuscitation if it fails because we mean to move heaven and earth to keep the patient alive. An OD gets you to the front of the line, almost no questions asked besides “what substance?” so we know what antidote to give.
I’m terribly sorry that you have had that experience, and I’m disgusted with people who have treated you that way. However, you are making similar assumptions about me that other people have made about you. Working as an ER tech, I’ve literally had mental health patients try to strangle me, then given 10 minutes or so to shake it off, and then run straight into another code on a 16 hour shift that did not include any other breaks besides that 10 minutes… and then I came back 8 hours later for another 16 hour shift because the department was so understaffed that it would have been disastrous if I called out sick.
I’ve come into work, wholly unrecovered from a kidney infection and my own trip to the ER as a patient, and never let a whisper of it show on my face so that I could provide the best care possible for my patients. I’ve been the patient in the waiting room with 9 out of 10 pain for 6 hours, and I know how much it sucks. That’s part of why I do everything I can to give every patient the time, attention, and care that they need to heal them as much as I can.
Your comment was removed, I wonder why.
I think the person I was replying to deleted their comment.
You don’t think age and sex are medically relevant? A 5 year old will scream about a scratch on their knee, but I’ll walk several miles home after making a meat crayon out of myself with my electric longboard and patch myself up.
You speak like someone with no conception of what pain is like outside of your own narrow experiences.
Trust me, lots of us out there would trade being meat crayoned 10 times over to get rid of our painful conditions. You can’t compare other people’s pain to your own if you haven’t experienced what they have. Even then, that’s not an excuse to deny people human pain treatment.
The problem here is that doctors would rather let 9 innocent people suffer to punish 1 drug seeker. You can’t judge how much pain is in by how someone ‘looks’. There is no ‘look’ to pain, especially in people chronic pain sufferers who have mastered the art of suffering unendingly without writhing on the floor because that’s not an option while going out in public.
I have been permanently in pain for 4 years, to the point where I have forgotten what painlessness feels like. Everyday, I wake up to a body that felt like it was sunburned for hours, fell down 3 flights of stairs, and ran 10 miles after. Everything fucking hurts and the smallest bump onto furniture feels like being stabbed with a knife. And yet, I go to the grocery store holding every whimper and tear in because I can’t shop if I’m busy writhing in pain. People see me and think I ‘look fine’ and have no idea the suicidal levels of suffering that come with invisible disabilities. Please don’t be one of them.
I was once in the emergency room for hyponatremia and you know how in triage, All the patients are in one huge room But no one can see each other because all the beds are partitioned off with curtains So we have some illusion of privacy in there.
anyway I overheard this twenties-something well-composed polite Caucasian male trying to explain to the doctors that he’s in pain and he needs medication and it was fascinating to listen to because I could tell the doctors had to use all their analytical judgment to determine whether or not he was really in pain or if he was just seeking the good stuff like benzodiazepines for the high (or whatever drug or effect theyre seeking, I dunno) Ultimately the doctors sent him away with Tylenol.
I experience pain on a scale of seven sometimes it wakes me up in the middle of the night It hurts so bad, and all the doctors give me is Tylenol and I can tell you it does nothing to numb the pain, but I have no desire to seek anything stronger than Tylenol because yeah reasons because I don’t want to become addicted to the good stuff I guess. I’ve heard and read and seen too many stories of people caught in that spiral and life is hard enough already and I don’t want to deal with benzodiazepine addiction on top of all the other shit life throws at me.
It’s recently been proven that NSAIDs are entirely useless too.
All I remember about NSAIDs is that they’re bad for your liver or kidneys or something like that, But in general they are designated for treating inflammation and pain and fever. Are NSAIDs still useful for treating those three things? or are they going to be banned by the FDA?
There’s a very free select types of inflammation they’re useful for, and not common types.
I completely agree with you. None of that really has much to do with my point though.
Weird. When I was 5/6 I split my head open and didn’t make a sound while got stitches done on my fucking forehead.
I had something similar. It’s also pretty clear that no small children are out to sell pain meds on the street.
Good for you. When I had migraines, I was in so much pain I repeatedly banged my head onto the wall until it was bleeding and then kept going until I was too tired. Then I would sit there and cry silently because my vocal cords were spent and breathing made my head hurt, until I reached postdrome.
I don’t know what point you’re trying to make. If you think this is a pain tolerance issue, I don’t think you know how pain works. Consider this, people experience pain subjectively and you can’t ‘see’ how much pain they are in because it’s not measureable by any metric, let alone facial expression. The 1-10 pain assessment chart is the biggest joke in the chronic pain community.
Hasn’t worked for me. My partner made me go to the ER today. I’ve been completely deaf in my right ear for a month now. They said that wasn’t an emergency and sent me out with a prescription for Flonase. On top of that. After I left I read my paperwork. They wrote down that my blood pressure was 177 over 114. But never said anything about it. That probably should also have been addressed but whatever.
That’s what I get for having no insurance in the US.
Certainly losing your hearing in one ear absolutely sounds like an emergency to me. Going death slowly over time is different.
Go back and tell them you smell burning toast.
Heh, I would, but unfortunately every time I go there and they blow me off they charge me at least a few hundred dollars. Of course I’ll never pay that, but this is why folks don’t go to the emergency room.
Also, I just want to add that this isn’t a small hospital. This is the world famous UAB hospital. You’ve probably never heard of it, but UAB the college and hospital pretty much are Birmingham, Al.
Going death slowly over time is the best case scenario.
Are you in a state with no medicaid?
I live in Alabama. We have Medicaid but at a whopping 14k a year I was told I make too much. I have applied many times. I am also a stay at home parent for a special needs child. But every time it comes back denied.
I went and registered for a charity hospital. The thing they seemed hung up on was how much my rent is. But I’m having to pay $50 a visit to go there. Which is full price.
I don’t know. Honestly, I have come to terms with the fact that I will die relatively young. Lack of medical care is a real thing. Just to be clear. I’m not saying that I am going to do anything to speed up the process on purpose. But I’m an old millennial and my quality of life has plummeted. As I’ve stated in other threads life just isn’t fun anymore.
Well shit, that’s awful.
The thing they seemed hung up on was how much my rent is.
Do they want you homeless or something? It kind of sounds like it. We really need universal healthcare, as flawed as that can be sometimes. This is ridiculous. Our country can be so great and generous and then you hear about this kind of shit. I’m sorry you’re going through it.
Whatever your job is, you will make more money outside of Alabama. There’s no monetary reason to be there. Move to a state with free Medicaid. Most of the blue states have it.
Mexico can afford healthcare. You could literally go to Mexico for this.
When I read stories like yours, I genuinely wonder how the people in America continue to vote against their own interests.
I hope you find some light in your life dude. All the best in the new year.
They probably didn’t mention the 177 over 114 because being at the ER is stressful. If you’re in there and under 160 they might congratulate you.
Super duper go see an ENT doc. Emergency room really is for emergencies. Mom’s been and emergency nurse for decades and hates the system but it is the way it is.
Ask your GP if you have one.
Fortunately the ER got me an appointment to see an ENT Jan 4th. I have to pay $60 up front and hopefully they can bill me the rest.
I kind of feel like this is punching down, when you look at the larger context of how fucked up health care is in the USA.
In the USA, it’s only the money that ever counts. Patient care is bottom of the list. One of the first things you see in any hospital ER is that “friendly” person with the rolling computer cart who wants to make sure you have insurance and can pay right fucking now.
The US healthcare system doesn’t exist to provide healthcare - it exists to provide profits for shareholders. Any positive health outcomes provided are a fortunate byproduct - they certainly won’t be delivered if they’re unprofitable.
Of course, the same is true of any product under capitalism, but US health is a stark example.
For the last year, maybe more, I’ve had a pain in my side. I originally thought, “Well, fuck. I’m overdue for kidney stones. I must be a tougher bastard than I thought, because my grandpa and uncle are huge tough men who were reduced to toddlers over this.”
It went away for a couple months and recently came back. It got hard to sit down if I’d been standing and hard to stand if I’d been sitting (but not so hard that I’m crippled or anything). That has changed recently from this dull hollow ache to this kind of sharp pain like something went from swollen to withered. It isn’t something that is putting me out of commission, it just sucks.
On top of that my mouth was hurting every morning, now it’s most of the day. I thought it might be my wisdom tooth, but I should have periods that are pain free. I took antibiotics that my friend was prescribed before she had work done to see if that would help if there was infection. It didn’t.
I’m gonna have to bite the bullet and go to the doctor soon.
If I’m dealing with serious issues, I don’t know if it would be better to kick the bucket and spare my family or deal with the nightmare of bills and travel and loss of my meager income. At least if I die, they can get social security checks to keep them afloat until my lady finds a good man. She’s a spectacular woman and she definitely deserves better than me.
It sucks that our health is a for profit system. It’s hard to trust anyone who is out for money.
I have a friend with ulcerative colitis. Her insurance company didn’t want to pay for the only medicine that has worked for her and now she’s relying on a charity to pay for the meds.
What a fucking joke. I’m almost rebellious enough to get a tattoo that says, “haha, tell the doctors and pharmaceutical companies that they didn’t get shit from this corpse” and just die and have a shirtless funeral and encourage people to take pictures and post time online.
That was really scary to read!
Here’s an adult in a modern western country who seriously weighs death against well-being. That is mind-boggling to me.
With all my heart, I sincerely hope you find your way to health, without being crippled by debt.
My guy, I’m truly sorry to hear the state you’re in, and hope you get the care you need soon without it crippling you financially.
I’m not sure what your options are for visiting a neighbouring country that doesn’t have the worst cost/outcome ratio in the world bar none, but that may be worth researching.
Any positive health outcomes provided are a fortunate byproduct - they certainly won’t be delivered if they’re unprofitable.
While the US healthcare system is certainly fucked up, this isn’t really true. Emergency rooms are required by law to administer care, regardless of someone’s ability to pay, and a lot of hospitals will waive the cost if you apply for financial assistance and have limited income. Granted, they’re not going to see you for physical therapy, and other required follow-up care, but they administer unprofitable healthcare all the time. In poorer neighborhoods people use the ER as a primary care facility, since that’s the only place they can be seen without money or insurance.
Do you think a government-mandated exception for dire circumstances is a meaningful counter-argument to the fact that the healthcare system is run for profit not care - even as you acknowledge the gaps in care created by affordability?
My cousin got a knife in his foot and I helped him out a wrap on it. We played video games until my wife, who is a medical professional, came home. Took one look and said, “Go to Urgent Care.”
Honestly it looked fine. But two grown adult men both shrugged.
Yup. Brain cancer most of the time.
Reading these stories here make me glad I’m the kind of person that goes to the doctor the moment I notice something’s off.
But the one exception for that was when, for “some reason”, for an entire month, I always started feeling fatigued after only being awake for a couple hours. It felt like there was a pressure in my head, and it felt like there was a rubber band around the top of my head (above my forehead). (Some of you probably know where I’m going with this now.) Thinking it was just seasonal allergies or poor sleep (I had a bad habit of “late to bed, early to rise”), I just toughed it out.
It took until my ears started feeling clogged that I realized what was going on. I’d apparently been dealing with a sinus infection for an entire month, and my ears were starting to get infected from it now. I’d never had a sinus infection without having been sick prior to it before. (I tend to get ear and sinus infections after every cold.) So it kinda surprised me, and it’s why it didn’t even cross my mind until I started feeling the effects of the ear infection. I think I took 2-3 rounds of antibiotics to clear it up, and I also took a round of steroids to immediately open me up and help me drain.
This is sort of similar to how I got diagnosed with IBD. I’d had bleeding for a month in the rear end, nothing big just small bits of blood. Which is a symptom of a flare up. Ibd is basically inflammation of the bowel btw.
Eventually the inflammation got so bad that I ended up with swollen feet and I couldn’t walk. The inflammation in the bowel led to an infection in my feet and the first day I had the swelling (I went to bed the night before and woke up with it) I went to A and E (I’m in NI which is part of the UK and so it was the NHS) They sent me home with ibuprofen and told me that my feet were swollen because of something muscular, also told me to use epsom salts in a bath so I bought two big fuck off bags on amazon. The next day my feet got worse so I phoned my GP practice and met with a Dr later in the day and he suspected an illness which largely affects kids, so he sent me to A and E that day to get tests done. Anyway about 6 days later after multiple blood tests, a biopsy and an iron infusion and a transfusion (I had bad anaemia) I was diagnosed with IBD.
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I understand. My wife passed in August and each day feels a bit like the definition of insanity, where you keep doing the same thing over but expecting a different result. The best one can hope for is a swift death.
I really sympathize with you. Wishing you all the best.
I don’t have the terrifying story a lot of people have here but I can confirm every time my SO has made me go to the ER/Urgent Care, I have returned with weeks worth of painkillers and other drugs to fix the issue.
