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ER on Friday night
After two crazy weeks in the whirlwind of professional conferences, I am glad to be back to my office tomorrow morning. The frequency of travel and being away from home has taken a physical toll on me because I am not doing what my doctor has told me to do. I guess that's what I have to pay for not going with the doctor' orders, and I paid for it the hard way...
Instead of spending quality time with Mr. before he moved to Boston for his summer internship, I spent last Friday evening in the emergency room for a duration of 4 hours. Actually, I spent more time waiting to see the doctor more than the time I spent with the doctor. I hate waiting at hospital. It doesn't have one bit of hospitality. Anyway, you might wondered why I visited the ER...it is a long story. But to make it short, I woke up one morning and discovered a big red blood clot in my right eye, just around the chamber of the eye. I was freaking out as you could have imagined, I called my doctor at 8 o'lock in the morning. Unfortunately, the office has not yet opened for business. After a day of constant dialing (and harassing the receptionist), my effort was to no avail; my doctor was all booked for another 2 weeks of her schedule. What the fuck? The nursed advised me to stay calm, and told me that it would not be a malignant condition through my details of explanation over the phone. As I mentioned at the beginning, the whirlwind of conferences didn't leave me any time to visit a different doctor and the best option I had available at the time was to visit the ER. And so I went.
Oh lord, the NBC' show "ER" has glamorized the emergency room, but the one I went to was nothing as glamorous as the setting on the dramatic television show. The place is inhospitable and inhabitable. It was damp, gloomy, stenched, and dense. I could feel the contamination of all kind of germs in the world captured inside the tiny and invisible-to-human-eyes particles of air floating invisibly around the room, and inside of every single breathe I took. I felt more sick just simply from the staleness of the atmosphere. Other patients in the waiting room had more severe injuries comparable to mine but I waited nonetheless (although the thought of going home immediately had crossed my mind) just to get proper diagnose from the expert. Sitting there in the waiting room, I became impatient. Odd, I thought to myself, the term "patient" as to denote "One who receives medical attention, care, or treatment" -- the term was coined to reflect a person's patience of waiting for the doctor. As in my case, I was an impatient patient who got jittery waiting in a roomful of germs and a strong pungent of other people' odors. YUCK.
After more than 3 hours waiting...impatiently, the nurse (male nurse) came out with a file chart on one hand, and the other one with a pen pointing the chart. He tried to call on my name but stuttered his way through "N-G-U-Y-E-N". It came out as "N-E-W-G-E-N"...in which I abhorred vehemently when it's being mispronounced horribly. You DAMN Americans could never pronounce "ethnic" names properly!!! The nurse led me to a secured double door, punched in the secret codes, and walked in as the doors popped opened. I followed him through a room fulled of other people were in for any many other reasons. The nursed pointed at an emptied bed sandwiched between two other people whom I later found out (while waiting for my doctor) that one had diarrhea (from eating taco) and the other had a knee infection (from the lack of mobility). After another 15 minutes of waiting, the doctor finally approached and introduced himself. He asked me a couple of questions in pertinent to my eye conditions then took the light device to check my eyes. He ordered me to look up, down, left and right. Two seconds later, he came to a conclusive diagnose that I have Subconjunctival Hemorrhage which is harmless, causing no damages to my eye sight, and will go away in two weeks or so. I breathed with a relief (amid the pungent of different odors) as the doctor reassured me of its conditions and effect (or the lack thereof). He asked me to wait (wait, again!) for the complete paper work (so I can pay my $25 co-payment) before I could be released from the ER. I was sitting there on my bed, feeling a load of weights lifted off my shoulder, all the worries were gone, as I listened to the sounds of moaning and crying from the other patients in the room.
I vow to take care of my body, my physical being, drink a lot of water, eat lots of vegetable, get lots of rest, avoid stress, and pace myself with work....so I don't have to visit the ER ever again.
Instead of spending quality time with Mr. before he moved to Boston for his summer internship, I spent last Friday evening in the emergency room for a duration of 4 hours. Actually, I spent more time waiting to see the doctor more than the time I spent with the doctor. I hate waiting at hospital. It doesn't have one bit of hospitality. Anyway, you might wondered why I visited the ER...it is a long story. But to make it short, I woke up one morning and discovered a big red blood clot in my right eye, just around the chamber of the eye. I was freaking out as you could have imagined, I called my doctor at 8 o'lock in the morning. Unfortunately, the office has not yet opened for business. After a day of constant dialing (and harassing the receptionist), my effort was to no avail; my doctor was all booked for another 2 weeks of her schedule. What the fuck? The nursed advised me to stay calm, and told me that it would not be a malignant condition through my details of explanation over the phone. As I mentioned at the beginning, the whirlwind of conferences didn't leave me any time to visit a different doctor and the best option I had available at the time was to visit the ER. And so I went.
Oh lord, the NBC' show "ER" has glamorized the emergency room, but the one I went to was nothing as glamorous as the setting on the dramatic television show. The place is inhospitable and inhabitable. It was damp, gloomy, stenched, and dense. I could feel the contamination of all kind of germs in the world captured inside the tiny and invisible-to-human-eyes particles of air floating invisibly around the room, and inside of every single breathe I took. I felt more sick just simply from the staleness of the atmosphere. Other patients in the waiting room had more severe injuries comparable to mine but I waited nonetheless (although the thought of going home immediately had crossed my mind) just to get proper diagnose from the expert. Sitting there in the waiting room, I became impatient. Odd, I thought to myself, the term "patient" as to denote "One who receives medical attention, care, or treatment" -- the term was coined to reflect a person's patience of waiting for the doctor. As in my case, I was an impatient patient who got jittery waiting in a roomful of germs and a strong pungent of other people' odors. YUCK.
After more than 3 hours waiting...impatiently, the nurse (male nurse) came out with a file chart on one hand, and the other one with a pen pointing the chart. He tried to call on my name but stuttered his way through "N-G-U-Y-E-N". It came out as "N-E-W-G-E-N"...in which I abhorred vehemently when it's being mispronounced horribly. You DAMN Americans could never pronounce "ethnic" names properly!!! The nurse led me to a secured double door, punched in the secret codes, and walked in as the doors popped opened. I followed him through a room fulled of other people were in for any many other reasons. The nursed pointed at an emptied bed sandwiched between two other people whom I later found out (while waiting for my doctor) that one had diarrhea (from eating taco) and the other had a knee infection (from the lack of mobility). After another 15 minutes of waiting, the doctor finally approached and introduced himself. He asked me a couple of questions in pertinent to my eye conditions then took the light device to check my eyes. He ordered me to look up, down, left and right. Two seconds later, he came to a conclusive diagnose that I have Subconjunctival Hemorrhage which is harmless, causing no damages to my eye sight, and will go away in two weeks or so. I breathed with a relief (amid the pungent of different odors) as the doctor reassured me of its conditions and effect (or the lack thereof). He asked me to wait (wait, again!) for the complete paper work (so I can pay my $25 co-payment) before I could be released from the ER. I was sitting there on my bed, feeling a load of weights lifted off my shoulder, all the worries were gone, as I listened to the sounds of moaning and crying from the other patients in the room.
I vow to take care of my body, my physical being, drink a lot of water, eat lots of vegetable, get lots of rest, avoid stress, and pace myself with work....so I don't have to visit the ER ever again.