An ER experience.

I hate hospitals, always have. I hate doctors, too - no matter what you say, they'll try and pin every sickness on an STD. Actually that was just one doctor... but still. Miserable people, all of them. Anyway, after five days of this wretched sickness Mom finally forced me (literally, forced me) into the car and took me away to the ER. A bit drastic, I'd say, but all the urgent care's were closed. Hospitals just give me the creeps. They're so closed in and tense. I was literally shaking the last time I was in one, when Jon and I went to see Papa. I guess I just associate all the unpleasant experiences with hospitals now. All the way down to my six year old self, sitting in the ER with a broken arm.

Mom and I went in through two pairs of shiny doors and up to a desk, where Mom told the lady through a microphone in the glass that I "might have strep throat." After signing a few things we went and sat in the waiting room, behind an older man with a bloody lump the size of a golfball on his forehead. There were a few kids running around the vending machines behind me; don't know what they were there for. I didn't bother to look. A tv was on and I watched a few minutes of the Olympics, while Mom called Uncle David about Ami's medicines. Shortly after a skier took a nasty fall, a woman opened the door and called my name (with the familiar mispronunciation, of course.). We passed through a hall where nurses sat around talking, and some beds were sectioned off by what seemed to be overly perky shower curtains. I was seated on a chair in the hall and interviewed about my sickness. The nurse, a pretty little woman, then taped a bracelet with my name and a bunch of numbers around my wrist. I don't know what the bracelet was for - were they expecting me to run away? Anyway, then I was taken back to the hall with the nurses and beds and told to sit on one and wait. It's just my humble opinion, but I think things would move along quite a bit faster if the doctors didn't sit around talking about fishing trips while we poor suckers are waiting.

The rest of it passed with the regular routine, or what I suppose was the regular routine - I don't really know, so on my part there was much confusion. My ears and throat were checked, and just when the pretty nurse assured me that all was finished and went away to get my prescription, a man walked in and shoved a metal stick under my tongue. He went away. A minute later he came back, and strapped the armband that tells your heart rate onto my arm. He turned on the machine and went out, and for a brief minute I actually believed that I had been mistaken for an amputee and they were going to take away my arm. After the pressure died off, he came back in, took a look at the numbers on the machine, and asked if I was nervous because my heartrate was really high. Now, he's a doctor, so I know he's not an idiot. But really, what kind of a question was that?

A third doctor came in, when the others were gone, and gave me a piece of paper with some unintelligibly scribbled words. A minute and some wrong turns in the hallway later, Mom and I were out.

She's at the pharmacy now, picking up my medicine. I'm sitting here, strongly hoping that all of this will go away before I am doomed to sit in class for 6 hours tomorrow...