On Friday I did something weird to my foot. I have no idea what I did, or how I did it, but since then I've been walking around like some old hobbly woman. I can't put any pressure on it so walking is not much fun. Not really sure what else to do about this Wavey and I headed to A&E this morning.
More than 2 hours later we emerged, blinking into the pouring rain. 2 hours! 2 hours of sitting there waiting, being watched and counted by various people in scrubs. It was nothing like ER, nor was it anything like Green Wing, it was simply depressing. A god-awful depressing place that can probably make you feel worse than when you went in. Everyone looked the same, downtrodden, beaten down by the waiting system, occasionally looking around the room wondering what was wrong with everyone else. Cringeing at the awful guy in green scrubs who practically yelled across the room that people had to give a urine sample as they shuffled off, cup in hand, mortified that everyone in the room knew what they were going to be doing.
At one point 3 doctors came out, stood together, did a quick head count and then sauntered off in the direction of lunch - wow was that like a kick in the teeth for everyone sat waiting. When the room gradually started to fill up someone made the decision to take some positive action and it was then that I limped after the urine sample shouting man in green scrubs who turned round and hurried me on as I was taking too long to limp to the room. Someone came in with blue scrubs on, prodded my foot, does this hurt, does there hurt (yes! owww!) and basically told me to go home and take painkillers. They sexed it up by giving it some big fancy schmancy name but basically I've damaged the soft tissue in my foot and will basically have to walk along like gimpy limpy until it gets better - oh joy.
The highlight (if you can call it that) was a woman arriving in a pink hoodie with two po-lice. She proceeded to try to get a fag off every single person in the room, asked repeatedly if she could have either a cup of water or go and have a "rolf" which means a smoke. She shouted a few times about being dehydrated. She was also very vocal about how awful it was and how no-one was going to take her picture or put needles in her. She laid down across 3 seats at one point and seemed to be going to sleep before shouting for more water. She asked intriguing questions like, why are your shoelaces taken off you when you spend the night in the cell?! Maybe she'd been hired as the entertainment for everyone in the room?
Truly awful. I'm curious to know that if you have a real emergency do you have to wait for 2 hours along with everyone else until the man in the green scrubs shouts you to go and do a urine sample? Everyone left the same way I did: feeling frustrated and for me personally, a smidge embarrassed that I'd been a time waster *limps away in shame*
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment