| Monday, September 19, 2005 |
| Secret Identity |
I am a con artist. A complete sham. I've been leading my colleagues to believe I'm senior management material with lots of experience, when in truth, I was hired by the CEO to infiltrate their web of complex medical services, and test their health care delivery systems from the patient's perspective and report back to them.
Early this morning, I decided to test their Emergency Room Services. Or should I say, the full on body hives and a rash which started yesterday made me decide to test it. The rash spread quickly and by 2:30 in the morning, I was pretty darn certain that if I could just scratch off my entire outer layer of skin, I would almost certainly feel much better. I was looking for a secret skin zipper so I could just peel the whole thing off and step out of it and send it to the cleaners to be washed and disinfected. At best, I needed to test the ER lest small children run screaming from the ugly lady who looks like she has leprosy with a second degree burn on it for color enhancement.
Funny thing is, when you present in an Emergency Room looking and feeling like I did this morning, they take you very seriously indeed. In a matter of about 10 minutes, I found myself in a treatment room with a whole host of people who promptly began asking me a lot of questions, while sticking IV tubing and other sharp things into me.
So, after an IV bag with a cocktail mix of steroids; coupled with mainlining some antihistamines and pain medication, things started to finally calm the eff down.
At 12:00 PM or so, they decided they had tortured me enough, and sent me home with even more bottles of pills to replace the pills that caused the systemic allergic reaction in the first place.
All in all, I'm feeling much better, and I'm sure I'll start to look human again in a day or three. I just hope this isn't a "drug cascade", where, by treating the original problem, you suddenly find yourself three degrees of separation from it in terms of other / additional drugs to treat all the wonderful side effects produced by the original "cure".
As for grading the experience. In all honesty, I have to give the system an A-, it's been pretty darn good overall. But now that I haven't found any major weaknesses in the system, I'm hoping my current assignment is over, and I can return to my undercover work as senior management.
Shaken, not stirred. |
posted by Broadsheet @ 2:36 PM   |
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| 3 Editorial Opinions: |
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I apologize ahead of time for the snark, but:
“Funny thing is, when you present in an Emergency Room looking and feeling like I did this morning, they take you very seriously indeed.”
heh. I’m sure being a member of senior management didn’t hurt. Let’s give it a real test. We can drive a pick ax through my forehead and out of an eye socket, have me arrive and ask “Health Insurance? What’s that?” I hope they have a cable and comfortable chairs in the waiting room.
eebmore
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eeb: Your snark is understandably well taken, and pretty damn correct in the context to which you refer. I'm being sarcastic, whiny, and looking for non-existnet sympathy points.
An adequate response to your comment raises innumerable issues, and if you don't mind, I'd like to play off of it for that in a later post.
It's a very good observation on a very real issue that deserves a post of its own outside of my whining (and itching!!).
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Jeez, you are getting hammered these days with health issues! I hope that it turns around after you've recovered from this latest.
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I apologize ahead of time for the snark, but:
“Funny thing is, when you present in an Emergency Room looking and feeling like I did this morning, they take you very seriously indeed.”
heh. I’m sure being a member of senior management didn’t hurt. Let’s give it a real test. We can drive a pick ax through my forehead and out of an eye socket, have me arrive and ask “Health Insurance? What’s that?” I hope they have a cable and comfortable chairs in the waiting room.
eebmore