pt 2 Adam in the ER

continued from last entry.

So, he went in to see the doctor. After 30 minutes or so, his mom came out to say that they were convinced he was dehydrated. I would have agreed, had he followed the order of the stupid sign and not had anything to drink for the last 4 and a half hours. However, he did NOT obey the sign and had in fact had a few bottles of water in that time. And he drinks a lot of water, in general, so I was not buying the dehydrated business. Apparently neither was he, and he refused the IV of fluids they were trying to give him. It was not the doctor who had made the assesment, it was the nurse, or maybe a med student. Hard to say.

She also said that they kept trying to make him lie down. They got him up on the bed and he just couldn't take it. His mom said he was literally screaming in pain. They wanted him to do a CAT scan. They were much more concerned about why he had fallen that with the injury resulting from the fall. I think they had it backwards. Treat the wound, THEN worry about if there's something wrong with him causing him to lose his balance.

Only 2 people were allowed to be with him at any point, so his mom traded places with me. He was standing in an exam room, swaying back and forth, as his dad stood by ready to catch him if he started to fall. He still couldn't sit down or lie down.

He still hadn't been given any pain medication. He refused the CAT scan because there was no way he could lie still for 4 minutes. The nurses/CAT scan dude were getting bitchy with him because he was refusing this stuff. Apparently they finally went to get the real doctor.

He was a very strangely shaped man. Tall, and very, VERY fat. But it wasn't like a normal fat... It was almost all in his stomach, and didn't hang down loosely in globs, but stuck straight out. It seemed like it would have been firm to the touch. Sort of like an un-naturally HUGE pregnant woman. Only a man.

That really has no bearing on the rest of this.

The doctor was adamant that he have the CAT scan. I pointed out once again that he couldn't LIE DOWN. Then the doctor said that if he had taken the IV he would have had pain medication by now and would be able to do it. At this point I kind of lost it and said loudly that had he been TOLD that he would have taken the IV 2 HOURS AGO! He had been in pain all this time for nothing.

I think the doctor bitched at the nurse for not telling him that earlier on. He got the pain medication. As they were injecting it Adam said "I saw a bubble go in!" the nurse explained that a small bubble in a vein is not a danger, but in an artery it would be.

He was already feeling better at this point, and the medicine wasn't even all in yet.

While we waited for CAT scan dude to come back, his dad and I laughted at his drug induced stupor. First he saw things drawn on the wall. Then he thought the doorknob was falling off the door. Then he told his dad to call Kev and J to tell them what had happened. Kev was the one who brought him to the hospital in the first place. Both Kev and J had been at the hospital up until a few minutes before this. His dad told him all this. Then Adam told him to call me in this really pathetic voice. It was cute. Later that night he asked me who had called me to let me know that he was there in the first place. It was HIM.

Anyway, long story short, there was nothing broken. Bruised ribs with some slight nerve damage to the nerves that run all the way around the ribcage. CAT scan was normal.

Right before we left, they gave him another dose of meds through the IV. Adam was still pretty loopy and made a comment about the bubble incident from earlier to the nurse (a different nurse this time) The nurse exaplined pretty much exactly what the other one had explained. I laughed and said that he was paranoid about getting an embolism. The nurse took a quick look at his chart and said "Yeah, paranoia is one of the number one side effects of smoking marajuana" Oh good GRIEF! He had 2 hits off a joint 6 HOURS AGO!! Total imbiciles.

Ladies and gentlemen, your medical system at work.

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