Yesterday my day started off with doctor visit that sent us to urgent care for needed abdominal Xray, then after getting home, we ended up returning to the ER based on urgent care’s recommendation. That escalated to levels that no parent wants to deal with. My girl is going to be just fine. The fever that sent us to the ER after urgent care was from undiagnosed pneumonia infection and not due sepsis that was the concern of why we ended up there. The point of this post is to discuss what I witnessed while in the ER.
I checked into the ER late last night. Lucky it was a lower than normal emergency room waiting time and there were not many people in the waiting room. There was a woman there that was politely approached by security that asked why she was there and she said “because Starbucks was closed”. Since she was not checked in to be seen and not waiting on someone she was asked to leave. She left and 30 minutes later she comes back and checks in. I heard her say she wanted to bee seen for her “weird cough that she is no longer experiencing symptoms”. She was obviously not planning to be seen but she would get a bracelet and be able to use the ER waiting room as her alternative homeless shelter. Maybe I a heatless asshole but I was just enraged by this. Yes, I understand that the triage department is not going to put her through to get a bed but her actions are just inexcusable. People go to the ER because they have medical needs not to use it as your alternative homeless shelter. If you have a real medical need you should be there to be seen. What might be minor for one person might be catastrophic for another. Look I have no judgement against the people there that really need to see a doctor but to make up symptoms so the security can’t ask you to leave is just a whole new dimension of being a garbage human. When we left the ER many hours later, this chick was still there just hanging out in the waiting room.