Thursday, February 24, 2011
My Left Foot
Tuesday afternoon I whacked my bare left foot against a metal desk leg when I sat down at the pc. Maybe the chair was a few inches closer or something, because its the only time that's happened. I nailed the foot around the middle toe & it sent a painful shockwave right through my foot. After I went "$%^&^@" I thought, The foot doesn't feel right. It was not an ordinary toe stubbing. When I stood & tried to walk, I could not put any weight on the foot.
So I lay down for awhile, the pain ebbed, I got up & still hobbled. There didn't seem to be any serious swelling, & it didn't hurt much when I wasn't trying to stand on it.
I waited a few hours, then tightly laced the sneaker on that foot & tried walking up the block & back. Not a good idea. I began to suspect I had broken something.
Wednesday wasn't much better, but it was mid-afternoon when I concluded I would need it x-rayed. By then, I knew it was shift-change time at Trinitas ER when chances of getting warehoused for hours go up. Canceled weekly shopping trip with Gina & said I was going to ER late morning today. She kindly came over with a cane & 1/2 gallon of milk (which I needed). Gina has recurring ankle problems, so has a cane, a stock of instant heat pads, ice packs. Also offered to drive me to ER today. I said don't bother to come into ER, I know the routine there & I think I can do it without any hand-holding.
Trintas has to handle urgent care, serious emergency care, & be a primary doctor for people with no health insurance of any kind. My primary doctor can't x-ray & do broken bones, but she's on the staff at Trinitas, so if for any reason I was admitted, she'd at least be keeping tabs on me. At Trinitas you sign in with a non-medical guy who takes your name & general complaint. He said if I had broken my foot I wouldn't be walking in. I mentioned this remark later to the young ER doc, who said he would talk to the guy. "You'd be surprised at the condition of the people who manage to walk in here."
Then you wait. Then you see a triage person & go into a little more detail. I think they're nurses although maybe some of them are EMTs. They'll fast track you if you're really sick or, with one woman while I as there, going into labor.
Then you wait. Then you get called to the registration window to show insurance card, sign a few papers, & get your I.D. wrist bracelet. Then you wait until an ER nurse calls you.
Once inside, you may have wait some more in the hallway. But they try giving your own little room with a door unless you're a candidate for admission, in which case they channel you to the back room, which has lots of really sick people in it, in curtained cubicles or out in the open on gurneys waiting for specialists. (The entire big University Hospital ER in Newark is like that backroom, whether you sprained your ankle or walked in with Bubonic plague symptoms. The hospital has a separate Dutch Schultz Memorial Gunshot & Knife Wound Clinic).
I had to wait a little while for my room. Fortunately, I'd brought my mp3 player/radio. A young doctor came in, poked around my foot, which hurt on the inside, not where he was poking. He ordered some x-rays. Those were taken promptly. The happy result was that I had no break, just, he suggested, a variety of very deep bruises, & I ought to take Advil & stay off it as much as I could for a couple days.
Then I had to wait 45 minutes while he imputed his diagnosis (getting up often to see other patients) & I could sign off on the printed discharge.
Total time: About 3 1/2 hours. Probably would've taken about same amount of time had I gone to one of the private "Urgent Care" centers.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
So I lay down for awhile, the pain ebbed, I got up & still hobbled. There didn't seem to be any serious swelling, & it didn't hurt much when I wasn't trying to stand on it.
I waited a few hours, then tightly laced the sneaker on that foot & tried walking up the block & back. Not a good idea. I began to suspect I had broken something.
Wednesday wasn't much better, but it was mid-afternoon when I concluded I would need it x-rayed. By then, I knew it was shift-change time at Trinitas ER when chances of getting warehoused for hours go up. Canceled weekly shopping trip with Gina & said I was going to ER late morning today. She kindly came over with a cane & 1/2 gallon of milk (which I needed). Gina has recurring ankle problems, so has a cane, a stock of instant heat pads, ice packs. Also offered to drive me to ER today. I said don't bother to come into ER, I know the routine there & I think I can do it without any hand-holding.
Trintas has to handle urgent care, serious emergency care, & be a primary doctor for people with no health insurance of any kind. My primary doctor can't x-ray & do broken bones, but she's on the staff at Trinitas, so if for any reason I was admitted, she'd at least be keeping tabs on me. At Trinitas you sign in with a non-medical guy who takes your name & general complaint. He said if I had broken my foot I wouldn't be walking in. I mentioned this remark later to the young ER doc, who said he would talk to the guy. "You'd be surprised at the condition of the people who manage to walk in here."
Then you wait. Then you see a triage person & go into a little more detail. I think they're nurses although maybe some of them are EMTs. They'll fast track you if you're really sick or, with one woman while I as there, going into labor.
Then you wait. Then you get called to the registration window to show insurance card, sign a few papers, & get your I.D. wrist bracelet. Then you wait until an ER nurse calls you.
Once inside, you may have wait some more in the hallway. But they try giving your own little room with a door unless you're a candidate for admission, in which case they channel you to the back room, which has lots of really sick people in it, in curtained cubicles or out in the open on gurneys waiting for specialists. (The entire big University Hospital ER in Newark is like that backroom, whether you sprained your ankle or walked in with Bubonic plague symptoms. The hospital has a separate Dutch Schultz Memorial Gunshot & Knife Wound Clinic).
I had to wait a little while for my room. Fortunately, I'd brought my mp3 player/radio. A young doctor came in, poked around my foot, which hurt on the inside, not where he was poking. He ordered some x-rays. Those were taken promptly. The happy result was that I had no break, just, he suggested, a variety of very deep bruises, & I ought to take Advil & stay off it as much as I could for a couple days.
Then I had to wait 45 minutes while he imputed his diagnosis (getting up often to see other patients) & I could sign off on the printed discharge.
Total time: About 3 1/2 hours. Probably would've taken about same amount of time had I gone to one of the private "Urgent Care" centers.
Labels: Elizabeth NJ
