She got the directions, we changed my pants, and then I hobbled back to the stairs, and now with a little more energy, hopped down the stairs. I laid across the back seat, and sped off to Torrance.
She dropped me off at the front door and went to find a parking spot. I hobbled in and got in line at the security gate. A metal detector. Great. Now my knee is throbbing and there's a security clearance...but okay, that's just how it is in this place, you get used to weird things like that when you don't have insurance and have a catastrophic injury. Well, maybe "catastrophic" is a bit melodramatic, but you get my drift.
Some security. The lady running the metal detector just waved me through, around the side technically.
First I went into the "Urgent Care" room, which was behind a heavy door. Agony showed on my face and sweat beaded along my brow and cheeks, and the lady behind the counter asked me if I'd made an appointment. It was 3 pm, maybe three hours since the incident itself. I laughed through gritted teeth and gave a quick explanation.
She said I needed to go down the hall to the ER. Sure, the ER, that makes sense. Awesome.
I went down the hall and there were three windows: one that had a long line, labeled "Registration"; one that had a single person, labeled "Check In"; and one labeled "Info" that didn't even have an attendant.
I stood in the Registration line for a few minutes, and then went over to the newly vacated Check In line. They gave me a brown caredit-card looking ID thing, with my name, date of birth, and hospital ID number newly embossed upon it, and sent me over to the Registration side, which was now open.
Over there I explained a little of what was going on, my situation, I saw Corrie come in and go into the Urgent Care room as I waved in vain, my sweat dripped onto the counter as I signed my name on various papers, and I wobbled precariously on my crutches. The lady reached over and put on a plastic bracelet. It was bright yellow and had FALL RISK printed on it. Then she put another bracelet on; this one had the same info as the brown card.
Then I had a seat. Next to a dope fiend. You betcha. The emergency room was mostly packed full, and there were only a few random seats open, but no two together, so I chose the easiest seat to get into: at the end of a row. Right next to me was a sleeping doper, snoring and coughing intermittently
I guess it makes sense...if you're going to overdose on heroin, you might as well be in a hospital. So she didn't OD, she just passed out. Eventually she roused after Corrie brought me a chicken burger from a place walking distance away from the ER--I was starving something fierce and the docs at that first Urgent Care in Long Beach had given me two bomber Ibuprofen and by this time, the waiting, I wasn't sure if I was going to faint or vomit.
But Corrie brought me the chicken burger and the doper kinda woke up, and then asked if she could have some of if I wasn't gonna finish it. I thought Corrie was going to beat her ass right there in the waiting room. Corrie gets more cranky than I do when it comes to hunger, and, she gets hungry more often. And, by this time she herself was starving, and, standing above me, she sternly declared, "I'm getting what he's not eating."
Then I waited. And waited. To be fair, some people probably waited longer. But, they weren't in the immediate state I was. I was called back the first time within the first hour, and gave my story to a nurse as she took my vitals.
Within the next hour I was called in to talk to an actual doctor, who made as her first prognosis the call for an X-ray, and then we'd be able to see from there what to do. Maybe it was just sprained, in which case I'd only need a brace. But we'd not know the severity of the sprain until after we make sure it wasn't broken with the X-ray. Now I was free to go back to waiting until they called me for the X-ray.
About how long was that going to be, I asked. As soon as we get everything ready. Okay. In two and a half hours I'd had about four minutes of face time, but it was a Friday, and the place was becoming a bit of zoo. And if you don't have money or insurance, or either, this is just what a hospital experience is.
Really, the X-ray call for me came within fifteen minutes of that chat, maybe less. I was the last of the group to get my leg X-rayed, and had a little fun banter with the radiologist, an Asian man who'd been doing that job for the past fifty years. He was good humored to say the least. I even made a joke about protecting my taint with lead, and he either got it or laughed because he knew it was something he should have gotten, but the laugh made it sound like he truly got.
Then more waiting until another talk with the doctor about the results of the X-ray. It turned out my leg was broken, please come this way and we'll get you ready for an CT Scan, we need a little more info on the fracture to be able to decide whether to just put you in a cast and have it set, or if it'll be more complicated than that. By now I had Corrie coming along with me.
I had the CT Scan, and then went and waited some more. I sat next to an older Mexican gentleman. We mixed enough broken English and Spanish to get to the bottom of our situations. I told him that we'd been for four whole hours, the bastards, but you know I'm cynical enough to have harbored no illusions about how things would transpire at Harbor UCLA. He said he'd been there since six in the morning. Waiting then going on thirteen hours.
Holy shit! What was he in for? Cancer treatment. Oh. Well, shit. Where is the last possible place you'd ever want to go for cancer treatment (I mean in a hospital setting)? Maybe the Emergency Room? But when you don't have insurance or money that's not earmarked for certain things, the ER is your only connection to doctorly things.
Then they called me back to discuss the CT Scan results, but the office was crowded and I couldn't sit, and even if the people had gotten up, I'm not sure I could have pulled myself out of the chair had I sat down. And, by now, my right leg is beginning to twitch as well. The lady there said that we needed to go upstairs to the mud room and get fitted for a cast.
Well that didn't sound so bad. 'Bout time we got something that resembled a way forward.
But the lady couldn't find any of the wheel chairs, so I was on my own for hoofing it up to the elevator, and then to the mud room.
In the mud room the cast guys said they'd take a look at the CT Scan and let us know how the cast would go. The mud room was dirty, filthy really, with a fine dusty film covering most everything. It was cluttered too, really cluttered with all sorts of hospital equipment...all covered in clay dust.
After maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, the doctor returned and said, "So, your femur's broken and you're going to need surgery. And we'll get you checked in tonight. For surgery on Monday."
Tonight? Surgery after the weekend? Tonight? Dammit, I was looking forward to a beer when we got home, you know, just one with the meds.
The splinted my leg up and because of the clutter, I had Corrie take a picture with my phone of the CT Scan of the fracture. The clutter prevented me from being able to see the screen. Seriously.
After the leg was splinted, it seemed like three people had done their jobs: one called to make sure a bed was available (one was); another was notified that an escort should be dispatched (maybe?); and somebody else probably felt smugly satisfied with their evening as well, I'm not sure.
What I do know is that it seemed like once those folks felt like they'd done their parts, they went ahead didn't pay it another thought, and Corrie and I sat with my leg splinted in the mud room for maybe a half an hour by ourselves. Nobody was even close by. When the young orthopedic resident came by and saw us, he was shocked we were still there. It only took another fifteen minutes to get it straightened out--that I did have a bed and that somebody was coming to get me and take me there.
Ah...what's it like to be uninsured...
(I make a lot of comments about the suffering of the poor and uninsured, but in a later commentary I'll make clear that had I been insured with my "managerial" insurance I'd have been screwed beyond belief with outrageous payments, and that being uninsured has actually been a saving grace.)
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