Take me To The hospital

By 9pm I felt about as bad as I’ve ever felt, and that’s saying something.  I walked into UMASS University Campus and was excited to see the emergency room was mostly empty.  I sat down in front of a grumpy old lady who barely stopped condescending and barking orders at the younger lady she was training to take my information.  After she took my info she said matter of factly, like it’s the type of thing you say to someone in the emergency room that has swallowed a football, “Ok.  It’s about a three hour wait.” 

I kindly told her that I could sit at home for three hours.  And, no offense to her, there is a hot lawyer with a hint of a British accent.  If it was going to be three hours, I would rather just be home.  She informed me that my insurance would be charged all the same because she took my information. 

This both angered and confused me.  A) it’s ridiculous that you charge someone for just having them recite your name and address to them.  B)  I had not the slightest idea I had insurance.  What kind of god damned maniac would insure the kind of job that I had?  At the time, I couldn’t imagine what smooth operate conned some insurance company to make that happen.  In retrospect, I think I know who it was.  So remind me to thank that lawyer I was talking about earlier.

Before I could protest any more, she stood up and started pointing at each person in turn and telling me how long they had been there like she was pantomiming a massacre.  “And you’ve only been here for five minutes,” she said, ending on me.  I realize now with what I do for a job and how she looked and was acting if I had driven a steak in her heart right there and then not only would nobody had blamed me, but I probably would have got away with it.

I decided to go to the hospital down the street in the not quite as good part of town.  It turned out to be the right play.  I was admitted into the emergency room and into a screening room before my special lady friend could park the car.  That’s when the news got even more lousy.

By 10:30 I had a bunch of blood tests, a CAT scan, and impressive amount of pain killers and had proposed to my attending nurse around 11 times.  I slept for a little while and was woken up around 5am to the news that I was being admitted.

There was a cyst that a lot of people get in their throat.  It’s in a spot in between your tongue and your voice box and people can live their whole lives with it unless it gets infected.  And mine got infected. 

Fixing it would be easy enough in theory.  The doctor made an off-handed joke, “you will be good to go in a couple of days and it won’t affect you at all, unless you’re a radio deejay or a singer.”  Everything he said after that was pretty much pops and buzzes.  They moved me to my room shortly after and I sat up all night contemplating if it was even worth not being sick.