I had to go to the hospital after my crash, which sounded like a pretty good idea to me at the time. They'd get me fixed up, tell me what was wrong, and I'd have some idea of how to move forward from there. Only it didn't quite happen like that...
The paramedics who took me there were amazing — super nice, and got me there fast. I got set up and waited for both my mom to come and a doctor to see me. Well, an hour later, one of them arrived, and it wasn't the medical staff.
Other people got admitted to the hospital and put behind curtains, nurses bustled back and forth, and I continued to lay there, my leg awkwardly propped up and the pain continuing to surge. I'm not the type of person to start howling as soon as I get a paper cut, but that's what you need to do in a hospital if you're going to get attention. So, I lay there in excruciating pain for over two hours before I finally got a nurse to give me something for the pain.
Fast forward many more hours — being told by more than one nurse they're sending me off for x-rays — and I didn't actually get transferred over until after the sun came up. It wasn't like the x-ray department was 17 floors up and in another wing, either; it was just outside of the ER. By this time, people who had been admitted after me had come and gone, with easily treatable problems like UTIs and flus, but not me. Total time spent at Toronto Western: about 11 hours.
At one point, a doctor did see me and was going to suture up my elbow. She rinsed it out, saline solution dribbling down my elbow and wetting my hoodie. I tried to tell her my back was getting wet but she just smiled and said, "No, no. It's going in the bowl". Sigh. The left arm of my hoodie was ripped and I was going to throw it out anyway, but I didn't want to spend more hours in a wet shirt.
And all the nurses and doctors who inspected my left arm kept pulling the sleeve over and down, over and down, over and down my road rashed arm. I kept telling them to just cut open the sleeve, but none of them would do it. Sigh. What's a little more pain, eh?
The worst part was having to go to the bathroom. There was no way I could get off this bed, so I had to use a bedpan. Twice. The first nurse's aide who helped me was a useless sack of potatoes, treating me as humanely as though I was a rock in her shoe. I told her, as a head's up, that moving my leg would cause massive pain, so what did she do? Not help me at all. Great. Leave the injured party with a horribly hurting leg and a mashed up elbow, on IV painkillers, to do everything. I asked her for alcohol wipes at the end, and she just looked at me like I had three heads. The second nurse's aide was actually more helpful, and didn't just throw a bedpan at me.
The paramedics who brought me in came back and visited me, which was super nice of them. Did I mention they were the nicest medical staff I encountered that night? They were. They asked how I was doing and if I'd had my x-rays yet, and we chatted for a bit.
But overall, I was at Western way too long and "treated" by people who saw me as a silent number. I'm really uncomfortable with whining and howling to get looked at, and I'm resentful of all the people who go to the ER who do that because it means I get ignored.
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