[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUlJfTGd6f0[/embedyt]
“I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be.”
-Alexander Hamilton
Every week there comes a time, when I look at my task list, scour my emails, and finally spot a moment to inform all of you lovely people of what thoughts have been mulling about in my brain. However, this week I imagine the words will pour out rather quickly, as I plan to recount my recent experience of finally attempting to get ahead of my own health, at apparently the worst time in our modern day.
First off, I would like to establish a small background as to why I have put off this endeavor for so long. For the past few years, I have experienced some rather odd health ailments. Starting with a strange skin condition that reacts to quite literally any touch. If something were to find its way across my skin, it’s not long before my body sends defenders (Histamine) to surround the area with raised red skin that is quite warm to the touch. A rather alarming sensation as it kind of came out of nowhere, and never really left. Nothing a daily allergy pill can’t keep at bay, but still quite odd.
A few short years later, I would start experiencing what I would call, “cold flashes.” A sensation across my entire body that would be the equivalent of freezing all of the blood in my system at the exact same time. Another alarming thing, but not something you can ever really diagnose outside of anxiety or panic-related situations.
Kind of like taking your car to the mechanic, only for them to not hear the damn ticking noise you brought it in for. Can’t replicate the problem, you really can’t diagnose it. Makes you start to think you might just be over-reacting or at worst going crazy.
There has been a number of other small issues that are essentially harmless as well, various aches pains, and all the other problems you would expect from an overweight American living in this day and age. Certainly, nothing major that could motivate me to pursue these issues further, but rather live through them and adjust my life around them. I have to say, I have really never been a fan of doctors in my life. I eat my apples with the sole purpose of keeping the doctors at bay, like garlic to a vampire.
However, I will be at the ripe old age of thirty in just a few months, and my health isn’t exactly where I would like to be. So when I start feeling my heartbeat in my throat and some chest pains, what was once a small signal, immediately changed to a flashing warning sign notifying me that it was finally time to visit the doctor.
SO I called up the primary care lady that I haven’t seen since the first two months of Covid, and find out that lady left a while ago, so it’s time to meet another new smart lady who can help me fix the oil leak, or whatever nonsense is causing that freaking ticking sound. You know the drill. They schedule me for two weeks out, and I write it on the calendar and grab a slice of cake. After eating the cake, I lose all sense of focus, and my gas tank feels like it is running purely off of the crud at the bottom. Next came the chest pains, then blurry vision, then… Uh oh,
This might be something bigger. Urgent care isn’t enough for this one…
It’s time to go to Mercy
I want to be quite careful in explaining, that this post is not at all meant to be about me. This post is meant to highlight a KEY issue I am seeing in the world, and how unbelievably serious I think it is that we do something to correct the problem, and fast. It’s important for you to understand my reluctance to go to the doctor because like many others my age, it’s hard to trust words that we can simply just research ourselves.
I arrived at Mercy with my wife at around 4:30 PM on Tuesday evening. The lobby was maybe half-full of geriatric individuals who appear to be quite familiar with the lobby I am now occupying. After explaining my current condition to the clearly stressed-out gentleman at the reception. My wife and I took a seat and began our journey into purgatory. Apparently, the issues I mentioned must have been severe, because it was not 5 minutes before they took me back to take an EKG, and hug some fancy gadget, that they use to make sure your heart is working the way it should. After maybe 10 minutes worth of short conversation with various nurses explaining my situation, they sent us back to the lobby in anticipation of a room being available to continue our journey.
So, with an IV in my arm, and covered in new cool stickers all over my body, we made the journey back into the lobby, where I would witness first-hand a world that I had been avoiding for quite some time.
It’s important to stress that not a single employee of that hospital deserves any bit of criticism at this time. You can see it in all of their eyes, the stress, the exhaustion. The absolute weight of holding the health of Douglas County on their shoulders. It’s easy for us to complain about wait times at any establishment, but when you are waiting four hours in a lobby in anticipation of waiting another two hours in a room, it’s easy to become neglectful of the basic respect for the individual providing you care. And I don’t use those numbers wildly.
From the moment we arrived back in the lobby, it became very clear to me the situation that the hospital is now presented with. I had heard horror stories from friends working in the field of the sheer amount of work on everyone’s plate, but until I saw it for myself, I had just figured it was a consequence of the environment. After speaking with a few lobby members, and the same stressed-out gentleman at the front desk, I had learned that the mental health CRISIS that Douglas County is presented with, is even worse than I had anticipated.
Every day Mercy employees are being faced with having to provide beds for individuals who can’t even tell you their own name nor any indication as to what ails them. I watched with my own eyes a few individuals who would come in, attempt to speak with the staff, wander aimlessly and sit in the lobby as if it was a moment of a personal sanctuary. With the staff knowing these individuals on a first-name basis, it was clear this wasn’t just one wild night.
I had a lovely conversation with a patient who noticed my arm decorations as a sign of my current heart investigation. We struck up a lovely conversation about the state of the world, the state of the homeless, and our view of the future. When she was called back, It was like severing a bond that I had just formed with an individual who was just trying to survive in this crazy reality we are in, leaving my wife and I alone once more, surrounded by individuals who were too trapped in their own chaos to even notice the tragedy around them.
At around 8:30ish PM my name was called, and we were escorted back to our new room. The nurse was polite, and honestly quite humorous. Responding hilariously to my quips about a busy night. A sign of life that my wife and I needed at that moment. After fitting me with new stickers on my gorilla-like body they hooked me up to a monitor that would squeeze my arm, then track the results. To be honest, it was all a rather unfamiliar experience for me. I had figured that my journey was coming to an end at this point, so when the nurse handed me a remote, my wife and I gave each other a look of dread as we realized, this is definitely not over.
The machine sputtered out all kinds of short beeps and noises during the time that it was connected to me. With a rising and falling number on the screen that supposedly indicated my current heart rate. It’s safe to say, I had been quite nervous by this point. Thought I would never let my wife see that. I attempted to lay down and relax, only for the machine to beep more and more. At around 9:30, my wife was starting to get nervous as well. I could see It in her eyes, that these issues I dismissed, may have been early warning signs of a possible problem in the future. The most curious and anxiety-induced moment came shortly after receiving my first “Cold Flash” of the night. The moment I started to experience the all-too-familiar sensation; the fancy machine decided now would be a good time to flash a big ol’
0 bpm
My wife, understandably, was terrified….
I just laughed… hysterically.
Even as the machine beeped aggressively, I knew nothing about me was dying. I knew that I was fine, but I also knew…. Something was just not screwed on right. Something in me was misfiring, likely due to all the garbage I have ingested throughout my life.
I also knew that even after hitting that button a few times to call in help, not only would nobody arrive, but that they would dismiss the reading as “The machine being on the fritz.” The hospital was just too stretched at that moment.
But it happened over and over again, I would get cold, and the machine would get angry. Who knew if it was me having problems, or the machine-inducing terror in my mind, either way, nothing was going to prevent the panic.
I would buzz the docs, they would say they sending someone to check.
My wife was about to get up when that door finally opened. Within the second the door was ajar an incredibly tired male nurse came in and proved me correct. As my wife began to get upset about the lack of response, he simply just blurted…
“It always does this”
Not a minute later, the doctor would arrive and set our minds at ease, or at least attempted to. Even though you could see the tired eyes, the demeanor on his face was confident, or at least that which I could see behind the mask over his face. He simply sat down and asked for the story of what brought me in. After having repeated the story more times than I could recall that evening, I was quite nervous as I wanted to make sure to express that I was a tad worried, but that I didn’t want them to drop the hospital’s needs on my behalf, as I knew I was going to be fine.
He went on to explain that all of the tests I had attempted that evening came back with healthy results. Excellent news to hear, but curious as I had no answers as to what was causing the problems I was currently presented with.
He then explained to me how anxiety, and heart palpitations work, and that stress can clearly cause them. Not that I hadn’t already spent the previous two weeks looking up every damn thing I could find about heart issues. I laughed at the audacity of thinking that I may just be stressed out.
He then took a pause and began to explain that he also worried that I may have an arrhythmia in my heart, meaning that it doesn’t quite beat in the same rhythm every time, but there was no way to identify it without a few more future tests and becoming part cyborg with a heart monitor in the near future.
At last, some validation that I am not crazy.
He then recommended I wear a heart monitor for the next few weeks.
#Progress
Then he said the magic words every patient wants to hear.
“We plan to have you discharged soon.”
Thirty minutes later, that same tired nurse from before came in, handed us some paperwork, and left in a huff. Of course, he didn’t say it, but I could tell, he had a bad day. Leaving the door open for the world to see my lovely gorilla body covered in fancy stickers, I just laughed. Not like they hadn’t seen worse before. But that was my signal, It was time to go.
After making our way to the discharge office, instead, we found the same stressed-out gentleman from the beginning, plinking away tirelessly on his computer. The clock read Eleven. I spoke with him about how I couldn’t believe how they can hold up the world like this on their shoulders and still keep a partial smile on their face. He gave me a half-hearted laugh. Apparently, they were at a fraction of their original staff. Very few employees meant that everyone was working crazy hours. Many of them had quit their jobs in the last year to move on to new careers, many others were fired for not complying with the current vaccination requirements, either way, they were a skeleton crew.
He then told me he wanted to become a nurse because at least then he would only be limited to a 16-hour shift….
My wife and I laughed on cried on the way, home. Me at the state of the world, her at the state of my health. We had planned to get food after our adventure, but instead, we were met with every restaurant in town being closed at the time… cones in every single fast-food drive-through. We were already hysterical, to begin with, this just set us off. Perhaps a sign from above that I should have probably avoided this kind of food in the first place.
First-World problems.
I wrote this entry, not as a “boo-hoo” piece about myself, but rather as an indication of the stress I think the world is currently taking on, and the ramifications of what may happen if we keep piling on too much and too quickly to meet the rising demand.
To end this, I want to point out that I don’t think I am dying by any means, nor do I think that I have anything severe to worry about with my health, I just now know what not to do. I’ll probably follow up with other specialists to track down the problem, just like every other American struggling to find out why their engine isn’t running to their standards. My heart is still ticking just fine, just maybe to the beat of a different drum
I myself, am nowhere near as formidable as the men and women (and those on the fence) holding up our county, working tirelessly with a fraction of their original staff. There are people who are literally killing themselves slowly so that we can try and live as comfortable lives as possible. It would be good to remember that next time you want to be upset with a human behind the counter trying to do their job and just get the hell out.
The only way I think we can solve this issue, for the time being, does not come from any politician or any form of government, but from the people in the community coming together to help where they can to share the burden. For any able-bodied individual not working, to pick up the tools around them and help the community to build the future.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to solve the problem, nor do you have to be a journalist to illuminate the issues. You can just be a helpful hand in a moment of need. You can be a shoulder to cry on for stressed-out nurses or doctors. You can be a friend coaching someone else through all of the chaos.
You can even simply….
Just be a fool trying to do shed light on issues bigger than you
Thank you for reading
-The Young Fool
