Emergency Rooms are for Emergencies NOT Financial Gain

By midday today, I couldn’t take the pain anymore. I finally got up the courage to put my fear aside and make my way to the hospital. The only problem was which one?

During my pregnancy four years ago, I was unlucky enough to find dissatisfaction in each and every one of Dubai’s hospitals both private and public, and ended up delivering my baby in Abu Dhabi, by choice.

After my pregnancy, there was numerous times that dissatisfaction showed its face again. The most prominent of times was when I was bitten by a spider, and could see the poison making its way up my arm along side the swelling hump on my inner-arm and decided American Hospital’s Emergency was the place to take myself. I clearly remember being ignored by emergency staff after admission, waiting for just under an hour while the doctor on call sweet-talked and reassured and reassured again, some new parents about their toddler who was suffering a common cold in the next room, before I flipped out, half delirious from the pain and probably the poison in my system and left screaming, refusing to pay any bills, and heading to a clinic where I allowed some other doctor to inject me with God-knows-what-probably-an-antihistamine, and offer me instructions on how to respond depending on further reaction from my body. This was long before the known ‘deadly spider outbreak’ in Dubai.

Today, had you been in Wellcare Hospital, you’d have witnessed such a scene. Again, I ended up screaming in a dissatisfied rage after being asked to wait patently for the doctor, who had been called to another ward on Emergency, and agreeing most patiently considering the excruciating pain I was in. No, it wasn’t this wait that set me off. It was the fact that after waiting for the bitch and finally getting to see her, she spent less than three minutes with me, most of the time attending to her cell phone (people calling her from different wards), or having the nurse attend to the ringing phone while her hands were busy attending to me. I was set off my MY need to insist she did a particular test, only for her to mumble at me the machine wasn’t working and thus was useless though she did it anyway before walking out. I was set off by her leaving, instructing the nurse to take blood, but not answering a single one of my questions. The nurse couldn’t answer a thing either, but suggested Panadol for the pain. When I shouted that I’d already eaten Brufen before coming – a much stronger pain medication and STILL hurt, of course she offered a shot. I didn’t want to hide the fucking pain, I wanted to know what was wrong! How hard is that to understand? The doctor had rushed out and the nurse was attempting to talk me into what would otherwise be useless tests unrelated to my increasing pain, while telling me that there was nothing they could do because the doctor didn’t know what was wrong.

How could the BITCH know what’s wrong? She hardly looked at or listened to me!

I’ve been here before. I know the damn procedures that needed to be done. I know that the tests I was being offered were no more than a two-fold, buy the bitch time and spend more money in the hospital.

I started shouting, as I called the hospital earlier and described my problem to make sure they’d have someone on call that could assist me. How can they possibly recommend I come, when the doctors are this busy? Isn’t this a private hospital? I mean the fucking place has valet parking. Maybe they should take some of the salary they offer drivers to park people’s cars and put it into hiring MORE doctors?!

I left the hospital, but not after making sure everyone in the Emergency ward knew what a joke this place was. I didn’t leave until I had assured the entire staff that people don’t walk into Emergency Rooms for fun, there most usually is a fucking problem and this is no way to deal with it. I didn’t leave until I made damn sure they knew I wasn’t paying.

And I haven’t found a hospital to help me yet. By the time this ordeal was over we decided to try a clinic. The clinic itself ended up being full, I was patient # 41. One doctor, a bunch of patients waiting, and they called # 21 twenty minutes after I sat down in the waiting room.

I was so stressed out, and in so much pain I left. I went home. I chewed on a few more Brufen tablets, and I finally passed out until now, until the pain crept into my dreams and woke me up again. Tomorrow, we attempt this again.

From my experience, pain is of no consequence in hospital’s here; even if you’re paying a lot of money to get a solution.