It was a Sunday night, I woke up covered in sweat realizing that I had collapsed and been passed out for over four hours. The room was spinning around me and my brain felt like it was in a washing machine on spin cycle. I kept trying to catch my breath to no avail as I stumbled across my room to grab my medication, bag, and phone charger, calling an Uber to the ER.
Arriving at the ER, I tripped out of the Uber wondering how I even managed to accomplish calling one, and went into the walk-in emergency center where I hoped they could figure out what was wrong.
This hadn’t been the first time I had collapsed, had dizzy spells throughout my day and shortness of breath. I found my pupils to be the size of sesame seeds and my brain to feel like it was whooshing around my head like a smoothie in a blender.
I explained my symptoms to the lady at the check-in counter who pointed to a hallway where no one was sitting at the reception desk. I was addressed by a police officer to sit in the waiting room.
Eventually, someone from triage came to get me and I had to explain my symptoms all over again. She checked all my basic vitals as I sat there unable to catch my breath.
My vitals seemed fine, but there was an obvious issue, this had been the fifth time this summer that I had collapsed and gone to the hospital and the underlying problem was not addressed or found. I explained this to her and how I just wanted to understand why I kept fainting; she didn’t answer me and walked out of the room.
I felt like I wasn’t talking to anyone, like these nurses were simply running through the motions on auto-pilot, doing the basic testing and then simply leaving bodies around to “wait it off” as if nothing was wrong if vitals showed up normal.
That’s when I realized: my name meant nothing, I was Jane Doe, it didn't matter why I was sitting in front of a nurse unable to catch my breath. I was just another body taking up space.
She rolled her eyes and someone brought me to a gurney in the hallway where she said, “just put her there over there,” under her breath as another nurse placed me in the hallway when there were clearly open rooms.
Next, another nurse came over running the same vitals, told me to pee in a cup, and took tubes of blood for “testing” they eventually forgot about, never giving me the results. I sat there once again when the main doctor on call came over, holding a container with a hard-boiled egg, water, milk, a stale banana nut muffin and some weirdly slimy apple slices.
I laughed out loud when he turned away after saying that I needed to prove that I could eat. I already had told them everything I had eaten that day. They now were assuming I was anorexic just because I am underweight. I had pizza, ice cream, bread, soup, tuna and snacks; I don’t think that classifies me as having a possible eating disorder. The judgment was just rude and a waste of time compared to finding out what was actually wrong with me.
The doctor wanted to see if the skinny girl could eat and feel less dizzy. Collapsing all the time WHEN I EAT does not classify me as needing to prove I can eat a stale muffin or some apple juice they forced me to drink later on.
I was hooked up to fluids and left sitting on my gurney in the hallway as nurses continuously passed me as if I wasn’t even there. I would repeatedly push my cart with the forced food on it to the side as they rushed around my invisible self.
2 hours passed and I was mentally and psychically exhausted. A nurse approached me handing me Tylenol to which I explained my head hurting was never one of my symptoms. She responded, “maybe you should just take it,” then proceeded to turn around to bring it back to the head nurse on call. She didn’t even let me respond.
My head was still spinning and I felt myself going in and out of passing out again. I asked for a nurse who said I would have to wait until they weren’t busy. Wasn’t I there for them to help me?
I felt like an experiment of some sort, like they just were randomly selecting medication that had nothing to do with my symptoms to see if I would improve in anyway so they could get rid of me. I did not feel like I was taken seriously.
Ultimately, I continued to feel worse and my head was constantly spinning. I decided it was in my best interest to go home, sleep, and call some specialists in neurology in the morning. There was no point in the doctors doing nothing as I sat there in the middle of the hallway on a gurney freezing.
“Excuse me?” I kindly said to a security guard sitting at the desk who motioned to a nurse who waved him off and said, “in a second.” Thirty minutes passed and I said it a little louder, when she sounded bothered by me exclaiming: “Give me a second I have stuff to do" and swiftly walked away from the front desk.
She never came up to me. My gurney continued to sit in the hallway in front of the desk in the reception area as a man collecting garbage walked passed me and flies swarmed the decaying flowers on the desk.
Earlier on they noticed my shaking and instead of asking me what was wrong, they forced me to take an anti-anxiety medication. They wouldn’t have realized that I was just freezing since they never took the time to ask why I was shaking. I felt drugged, hazy, and dizzier than I was before I had come in. If anything, I had anxiety from the way I continued to be treated by the staff after they drugged me.
Finally, I had enough and began to cry. I felt like my health didn’t matter to them. Not once had they taken the time to assess me and see if there were other tests they could do to see what could be causing the dizziness. It was like they didn’t even care to figure out what could be causing such a thing.
“Nurse, can I please leave, my parents would rather me just see a neurologist in the morning since I am sitting in a hallway being untreated,” I exclaimed. “You will have to wait can't you see that I am busy?” the nurse said rolling her eyes and continued to talk about wine and laugh with the other nurses. Yeah, seems really busy, I thought.
I tried to take out my IV myself since no one would help me and another hour had passed. The head nurse noticed and promptly told me to stop. She then finally came over after another hour and removed my IV exclaiming, “the only reason I came over to do this was because I didn’t want blood everywhere.” I sat there crying and in shock that this is how someone would treat a patient who is vulnerable and putting their health in the hands of someone else.
Leaving the ER I felt worse if anything and furious. I am in shock of how the system treats their patients and the way they belittle them as if they know nothing or are making up their symptoms. My experience I know is not one that defines every nurse; however, I wouldn’t wish my experience on any other patient that could go through the ER. The most important thing in life is our health so why not take is seriously.
