It's An Emergency

I just have to ask - is it just Americans who are complete pussies, or has the same thing happened to the British since I left? I remember when a visit to the Emergency Room meant that you had an arm hanging off, or an axe sticking out of your head. Or possibly that you'd inserted something inappropriate in your rectum and got it stuck. It was a place you only went if you really had to, and as if to encourage you in that way of thinking hospitals arranged for giant queues which you could only bypass if you were at the point of exsanguination or cardiac arrest. Nowadays people seem to trot down to the Emergency Room for what appear to me to be trivial reasons. For instance, every year that vomiting bug seems to go around - you know, the one where you puke and shit yourself empty for about 24 hours. It's been a couple of years since Bison Daughter brought that little treat home to us but whenever it goes around you hear people talking about how they had to take their kid to the Emergency Room to get an IV.

I don't want to sound too much like an old git but "back in my youth" my parents would no sooner have taken me to the ER if I puked for a bit than tried to teach me to fly. Puking is just something kids do (especially if, like me, they drink stream water) and I don't recall anyone I went to school with needing to get intravenous fluids for a case of the squits.

Mrs Bison recently had a cold, a fact that she shared with another mother at the school last week. This woman had had the same cold but had gone to the Emergency Room the previous evening. For what? If someone showed up at the ER with cold symptoms I'd be inclined to send them for a psych evaluation. What goes through your mind when you're sitting there thinking "my nose is a bit blocked up" while someone gets rushed by you on a gurney with six gunshot wounds and a bag of plasma in one arm. Or are the ERs so full of people with the shits and the flu that there's no room for the seriously ill?

I'm aware that there's a male bias against going to the doctor - we'd all rather risk death than show up in the waiting room with unworthy symptoms. I think it goes back to the pussy thing - you don't want to be sitting there looking a bit shivery while the bloke next to you has an eye missing and the one over the other side of the room has his bloody stump of an arm in a sling. You feel like the doctor is judging your maleness by your ability to withstand suffering before coming in. When he says "Now what seems to be the problem Mr Smith" he's really asking "Now Mr Smith, do you have a valid reason for being here or are you just a pansy weasel homo?" If you're not careful you'll respond to the subliminal question without realizing it - "I'm not a homo, Doctor, I really do have a very sore throat."

It's not just blokes though. Mrs Bison insisted that I get this hideous looking mole checked out because it might be cancer. I was more inclined to wait and see if it grew to the size of, say, a beer bottle top, and then worry about it. I knew if I showed up I'd feel like a pussy and they'd cut it off no matter how safe it looked, just to avoid any liability. So I ended up with a hole in me for no good reason. However, if I suggest that she go to the quack then suddenly it'll wait for a day, or seven. Which means that she wouldn't be seen dead in the ER for anything short of, well, death.

So if you're one of those ER frequent fliers then maybe it's time to take a couple of aspirin and stay in bed for a day or two before calling out the Medevac helicopter to deal with your rampant piles. Either that or stop shoving inappropriate things up your anus...


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison