Spent most of the week in the belly of America’s healthcare beast. And it started with something in my belly. Suffice to say, I needed an ambulance ride to the ER and emergency surgery for something totally unforeseen, unrelated to but in the midst of the current COVID crisis.
I will tell you that the nurses, orderlies, custodial and food workers were all kind and dedicated professionals, and I couldn’t be more grateful to them. But there were some truly bizarre moments, and I want to share one of them with you.
I’m lying on a gurney in the ready room at the COVID Hilton, my gut scrubbed and primed for incision. The bemasked surgeon enters the room and asks the nurse attending me, “Where is the other doctor?”
“Jeremy is here,” she says, tapping away at the roll-away laptop next to my bed on wheels.
“Jeremy,” the surgeon repeats, looking around. He turns to me and asks if I’m ready. I say something vaguely affirmative, but he’s distracted. He sits down at a desk across from me and takes out his phone.
The surgical nurse arrives, introduces herself to me, then starts helping the attending nurse with her data entry. “You can’t confirm the post op care plan because it hasn’t been entered yet,” she’s says. “See? They haven’t done it.”
“Where is the second doctor?” the surgeon barks into his phone, his legs up on a chair.
“Scroll down,” says the surgical nurse. The accounting system is giving them an argument. “It won’t let you confirm until you put something in here,” she says.
“When the patient dies, who’s going to call the family?” asks the surgeon.
Another guy in scrubs and hairnet arrives. The surg nurse hails him. “Jeremy! Where did you come from?”
“My mother,” Jeremy says. “Always.”
It seemed we were ready. On the way into the operating theater, the orderly sang, “We’re off to see the wizard!”
When I was discharged on Thursday, I was asked to sign an agreement that, if I were to return to the hospital with any additional problems related to this health issue, I would need to do so by noon the next day or it would be considered a second incident and, therefore, be charged separately (i.e. not be covered by insurance). This is America’s health care system in a nutshell. (As it turned out, I went back the next day at 4am. Plenty of time!)
luv u,
jp
