ER Visit

Thursday, September 11
Last week my course assistants politely informed me they'd rather I wasn't in class for recitations. So, this week I spent recitation time pacing around aimlessly, feeling useless as my own class proceeded without me. A friend accused me of suffering from separation anxiety.

Then, at 1:20pm, I got a call from an unknown local number on my cell phone. Normally I don't answer these, but I was just sitting in my office doing nothing, so I picked up the call. "It's me," said a very weak voice. It was Virg. She was at the endocrinologist's office, and when they tried to draw blood from her, she fainted. She sounded fairly incoherent, but she clearly wanted me to come pick her up. The problem was that she had the car.

She gave me an address, and I decided I'd better call a taxi so I could get over there quickly. Standing at the street where the cab was to pick me up, I called Virg's cell to let her know I was on the way, but she still wasn't making much sense. I had her put her doctor on the phone. From him, I learned that they'd had a hard time reviving her after she fainted, and since she was still very weak, he thought I'd better get her to the emergency room. Remembering the last couple of times something like this had happened, I knew Virg would need fluids, electrolytes, and food. I asked if the doctor had given her electrolytes or anything, and he said he was only giving her water. I told him this sort of thing had happened before, and that I was kind of hoping an endocrinologist would be able to figure out what was going on. Ugh. I went to the nearby vending machine for Gatorade and discovered it only took coins, and I was 3 quarters short. So I resorted to begging for change, and luckily someone walked in soon who was able to give me change of a dollar.

Armed with my Gatorade, I waited for the taxi. After 20 minutes passed, I called the taxi company and waited on hold for several minutes. Several calls later and still unable to get through, I tried calling other companies until eventually I got one who said they could pick me up in 10 minutes. I waited. 10 minutes went by. Then my cell phone rang. It was the taxi asking for directions. Here's a professional Pittsburgh driver who expects some guy who has lived here for two months to give him directions to CMU. I guessed road names and did the best I could. He told me he could be there in 10 more minutes. 10 more minutes went by. Then another 5 minutes. At this point it had been over an hour, and I could easily have walked to the doctor's office by then. Finally, a taxi emerged. In the cab, the driver asked me for directions to the address Virg had given me--a major street in Pittsburgh--and again, I guessed how to get there. Then he told me how terrible taxi service is in Pittsburgh. No kidding. We neared the address only to discover that the major street was closed. Typical Pittsburgh. I got out of the cab and ran the rest of the way, which turned out not to be that far.

I found Virg lying down in an examining room, and she looked terrible. I gave her the Gatorade and waited to speak to her doctor. There were lots of nurses standing around looking helpless and worried. I had a nurse wheel Virg to the curb while I went off to find the car and bring it around front. When Virg was safely in the car, I asked the nurse how to get to the hospital. Go two lights and turn right. Was it that big hospital-looking building that we could see a couple blocks away? Yes. I haven't even started driving, and we're basically already halfway there. At this point these nurses had spent nearly two hours worrying about Virg, and somehow no one had thought to just wheel her a couple blocks to the hospital.

Outside the ER, I found someone who could wheel Virg inside, and I passed them the note from her endocrinologist. After parking the car, I saw Virg get admitted, and I stayed in the eerily silent ER waiting room to answer questions about Virg. The woman there asked me for Virg's address, phone number, employer, and at some point she asks, "Religion?" I answer, "No," wondering why would they need to know that. The woman was clearly confused by my answer, and it took her a moment to resume collecting Virg's info. Eventually, she had me forge Virg's signature on three documents, which seemed pretty sketchy to me.

Inside with Virg. She was still very weak. It was 3:30pm, and she still hadn't been able to eat lunch. I got permission from the doctor to finally get her some food. She started feeling a lot better after that, and Virg believes it was the chance to eat that really helped--more than the Gatorade and IV and anything her doctors did. Before we left, though, they performed a lot of tests on her, including a CAT scan. At one point a couple of technicians asked me to leave as they started setting up some equipment. Virg found the strength to ask what they were doing, and when they said they were giving her a chest x-ray, she demanded to know why and sent them away. And of course she was right--her doctor hadn't ordered it. Go West Penn Hospital.

The room they put Virg in was intolerable--so small that the doctor and I couldn't really fit in the room at the same time. There was a thin curtain separating our side of the room from the old man lying in the next bed. Throughout the hours we spent in that room, the man continuously called out incoherent obscenities and threatened to f'ing punch various nurses and doctors. Virg used my iPod to shut out the noise.

In the end, none of the tests revealed anything, and Virg was feeling better, so we went home, having not really learned anything from the whole scary experience--except maybe that it's important to eat more before having your blood drawn. Oh, and not to call a taxi in Pittsburgh.