Quoth AccountingDrone
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Nasty
My Gods Gift to Paramedics ex-roommate got appendicitis; textbook case, and wouldn't let me take him to the hospital for a couple of hours before the pain got so bad I told him he could either get in the car or I could call 911.
So I describe the textbook symptoms to the ER staff and tell them I'm sure it's a hot appendix (he'd already had his gallbladder out in an open procedure by refusing to go to the hospital in time).
His fiance arrives and is the only one allowed back. After several hours she comes to the waiting room and says to me, "how long should this take?"
I ask if the blood tests are back. She doesn't know. So I go back and talk to the nurse. She says the CBC has been back for a couple of hours.
Well, what was the white count (WBC) I ask? She doesn't know. So she looks. Well over 10,000 (5-10 thousand is normal).
That plus the physical symptoms is diagnostic for acute appendicitis.
So when's the surgeon coming in, I ask?
He hasn't even been called, I find out.
Turns out the same idiot PA who misdiagnosed my first kidney stone about a year earlier is taking care of GGP. So I confront him. When are you calling a surgeon, I ask.
He hems and haws and has no real answer. So I tell him if he doesn't call the surgeon RIGHT NOW I will start raising all kinds of holy hell. I was furious.
Surgeon is there in 10 minutes, comes right out to fiance and me to tell us GGP is going to the OR right now!
After surgery, the doc tells us the appendix was about to rupture. He got to the OR in the nick of time.
And that, folks, is why I nearly killed myself a few years later by refusing to go to that ER when I was bleeding to death.
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