ED

[khiemtran]

So, I ended up spending most of today in the local hospital's emergency department - which was a lot less exciting than you might think. There certainly wasn't much evidence of any emergency. In fact, I was beginning to get concerned at one point that I was their only patient and they were just keeping me in so they had something to do.

The day started off roughly according to plan. I made it to the medical centre just as it opened, saw a doctor straightaway and explained my symptoms and he agreed that it seemed a clear case of penicillin allergy. He recommended leaving off the antibiotics altogether and just resting up for a few days. However, just in case the rather alarming looking spots that now covered my body were due to something other then the penicillin, he put me down for a battery of tests, and I went up the stairs to Pathology where they took out five vials of my blood.

So far, so good.

Then I went home, ate some breakfast, prepared to rest up for the day ... and coughed up some blood.

A quick call back to the doctor and he said that since I had been coughing so much it was probably nothing to worry about, but just to be safe I should go to the hospital where they could get their blood tests done on the same day.

Okay, well that didn't sound fun. I could just see myself sitting for hours in a crowded waiting room full of flu victims. To my surprise, though, the Emergency Department waiting room had just one other patient in it when I arrived, and he'd left by the time I'd given my details.

The waiting room had one row of chairs marked "triage waiting", so I sat there until a triage nurse appeared behind the triage nurse window. Then I gave the whole story, she took some measurements, and I sat down again, this time on one of unmarked rows.

Eventually, a doctor came out and I was taken in to a consulting room. I gave the whole story again, and the doctor ordered up a whole new set of blood tests and some chest x-rays. Getting the blood taken out was relatively fast, but after that there was hours of waiting around for the results.

The Emergency Department turned up to be quite a calm and relaxing place, at least on a Friday morning. For long periods, no-one seemed to be visible at all, and I soon realized that each time a doctor or nurse indicated that they were just going to be back in five minutes, it was easier just to figure on it being half an hour.
Luckily they had a consulting room spare so I had a bed to lie down.

At last, we got around to the chest x-rays, so I waited (and waited) for someone from Medical Imaging to come.
Then I posed for my photos, told the whole story again to the radiologists (who looked at my spots and diagnosed German measles) and I was taken to the Medical Imaging waiting room, where apparently I was forgotten until someone took me back to the ED. Then it was just a matter of sitting and waiting again for the doctor to come back with the final results (pneumonia) and then the script (for two antibiotics safe for people allergic to penicillin).

All up, it took just over three hours and I feel somewhat guilty about squandering their resources. But, at least I know it's nothing more serious now and the local doctor probably wouldn't have been able to detect the pneumonia without the chest x-rays anyway.

Comments

[tychist.livejournal.com]

Pneumonia and penicillin allergy are both potentially life-threatening, doesn't seem like resources were squandered to me. Take it easy, I hope you're better soon.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear! Take care. Pneumonia sounds nasty enough to me, though it sounds like they've caught it early and it should therefore respond well.