Erin The Great

In the last 6 weeks I have been a regular it seems in the emergency room of the Utah Valley Hospital. It all started October 20 when my friend Candice was dancing nearby on her long board and took a turn for the worst. A shattered ankle, morphine and a surgery later we all headed home after camping out in her hospital room for 3 days.

All was well when a week later at a Halloween dance I threw my knee out again, only this time I displaced the patella and tore the meniscus. There we were again but at least this time we knew where all the vending machines on every floor were. It finally seemed that peace would once more be restored.

Last night was like any other except for my friend Sienna was admitted into the emergency room for heart pain. After what seemed like every wrong test in the book, they discharged her for inflamed heart muscles but she’d be ok with just some Advil. After several visits I have to come to realize that not all hospitals are great grand and wonderful with staff ready to help you without botching things up. This worries me due to the fact that one day I’ll be a doctor and I hope beyond hope that I don’t turn out like some of the people we’ve encountered. Here’s a list of pro’s and con’s of hospital stays.

• Pro’s – Wheel chair races are fun no matter what age you are, Day nurses are the only nurses that actually know what they’re doing, you can sock surf down the 3rd floor corridor at 3 am and there’s nobody there, cafeteria food really isn’t all that bad in fact the Provo hospital is one untapped resource for great food, really attractive male interns and doctors, free internet, pizza parties with the PA’s and nurses.

• Con’s – Night nurses trying to kill you because they don’t know how to install or even operate an IV properly, nurses that don’t give you the proper medication because they think you’re ‘faking the pain’, idiot doctors who tell you and your friends that you’re going to hell because you’re not married and don’t have kids, telling you that you have no business going into the medical profession because your job is to be a Mormon baby breading machine, being told that anxiety medicine is only for people who don’t have it together.

I realize that doctors and nurses get lied to constantly but when you have someone who just wants the pain to stop and wants their medical stuff taken care of, you’d think that people would be willing to help right? This is ridiculous! I’m making a promise right here right now that I refuse to be one of those people who doesn’t listen and treats patients like crap. I will listen and try to the best of my ability to get a correct diagnosis on my patients, and I absolutely refuse to leave them in the hands of the ‘night nurses’ or the butchers of Kavorkian and the bringers of the apocalypse. I’ll take a stand and make a difference and I will squash anyone who disrupts the peace that I will fight like hell to restore… beware of the night nurses!