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Jan. 8th, 2004 03:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
electriclandThree years ago tomorrow at about 1 in the morning I walked into the Montreal General's ER with excruciating abdominal pain and with the start of a fever. I stayed overnight, went in to work, got scolded, went home, went back to hospital when the pain and fever got worse, then spent 2 days and nights on a gurney before they discharged enough people to get me a bed. That was the start of the fantastically awful year that was 2001 (which, frankly, sucked well before September 11th came along to put the capper on things).
Wow, am I glad that's over. Things are going MUCH better now.
Actually as hospital stays go, it wasn't bad once they stuck me on enough painkillers and an IV drip. I was the youngest patient in the ER by 30 years or so, and I felt like something of a fraud amid all the old people with terrible things wrong with them, or nothing much wrong with them but nobody at home to take care of them -- I mean, I was perfectly able-bodied and, aside from minor details of the pain and the infection, perfectly healthy. The staff at the General, with the exception of one and a half porters, were lovely, and I got a lot of visitors and flowers. Eventually, I got out.
Those porters, though.
The first, a woman of about 50ish, wheeled me up to the ultrasound room after I'd spent the first night dozing fitfully in the ER.
"Have we been a naughty girl, then?" she asked.
Dazed, confused, sleep-deprived, feverish and in pain, I just stared blankly at her.
She pulled a condom out of her pocket and waved it at me. "I always carry one of these."
I couldn't think of anything withering enough to say, so I stayed quiet until she left. In retrospect I wonder if I should have complained to someone. It seems minor, but I was shocked, and I've never forgotten it.
The half was just funny -- I was being taken back to my room after another ultrasound, and my ever-thickening medical chart was travelling with me. I flipped it open and started to read. The porter said "You're not allowed to read that."
This time I just ignored him.
Wow, am I glad that's over. Things are going MUCH better now.
Actually as hospital stays go, it wasn't bad once they stuck me on enough painkillers and an IV drip. I was the youngest patient in the ER by 30 years or so, and I felt like something of a fraud amid all the old people with terrible things wrong with them, or nothing much wrong with them but nobody at home to take care of them -- I mean, I was perfectly able-bodied and, aside from minor details of the pain and the infection, perfectly healthy. The staff at the General, with the exception of one and a half porters, were lovely, and I got a lot of visitors and flowers. Eventually, I got out.
Those porters, though.
The first, a woman of about 50ish, wheeled me up to the ultrasound room after I'd spent the first night dozing fitfully in the ER.
"Have we been a naughty girl, then?" she asked.
Dazed, confused, sleep-deprived, feverish and in pain, I just stared blankly at her.
She pulled a condom out of her pocket and waved it at me. "I always carry one of these."
I couldn't think of anything withering enough to say, so I stayed quiet until she left. In retrospect I wonder if I should have complained to someone. It seems minor, but I was shocked, and I've never forgotten it.
The half was just funny -- I was being taken back to my room after another ultrasound, and my ever-thickening medical chart was travelling with me. I flipped it open and started to read. The porter said "You're not allowed to read that."
This time I just ignored him.
