Oswego...Satan's personal Hospital....

I don't know if you have ever had an accident or been seriously hurt. I've had the misfortune a few times in my life and I guess I had become a little spoiled by the high quality of the health care we get around here. There is always a moment, when help has arrived and you know someone is taking care of you, when you relax and let the "shock" just take over. You close your eyes and just start to drift away, feeling safe after the stress and fear of the initial injury or accident. The paramedics had assured me that they were going to get me out of the car and into the ambulance, sending me on my way to the hospital, just relax... so I did.

Strong hands grasped me...1...2...3...

Then they dropped me.

Not all the way to the ground but they banged me around knocking me into the car pretty good.

They tried again.
And dropped me again...and again a third time before finally manhandling me onto the stretcher. I was no longer "relaxed". In fact, I was doing a lot of yelling and screaming as I could feel the broken ribs grinding together with every movement. Once on the stretcher, getting me ON the ambulance also proved to be a problem. The stretcher refused to "fold up" as it was supposed to so it apparently was necessary to keep slamming it over and over again...

On the ambulance, I tried to close my eyes again, when suddenly I felt a terrible stabbing pain in my arm. Someone was trying to start an IV...not very skillfully either. Being strapped to the board with my head in a collar, my line of vision was only directly in front of my face. I couldn't see anything but the ceiling and I guess no one realized that I couldn't SEE what anyone was doing and no one felt obligated to TELL me what they were planning to do to me BEFORE doing it. This was apparently standard procedure in Oswego and I NEVER closed my eyes again.

In the emergency room, they proceeded to stab me with needles and press on my broken bones without ever warning me they were going to do it. Every time I screamed someone would testily yell back at me, "WHAT?"... To which I would scream "That hurts damn it!" and the Doctor kept nervously asking "Why? Why does that hurt?"

"Oh I don't know...maybe because ITS BROKEN you idiot!"

I had to pee REALLY bad and they couldn't let me off the board yet so a nurse prepared the catheterize me. I have had this done several times before and I know that if you do it RIGHT it is completely painless but if you do it wrong....Lets just say I think it was her first time and my yelling and swearing didn't endear me to her either. Once she managed to get it in, the entire staff apparently has a directive to make sure they get their feet tangled in every catheter tube/bag that they come into contact with in order to make sure "It's really in there good." Kicking your feet around violently to dislodge it is encouraged.
Also, my room apparently had a bunch of supply cupboards in it that employees used CONSTANTLY so while she was fumbling around down there at least 20 people walked in (leaving the curtain wide open mind you) to watch the show as they retrieved bandages and what not from the cupboard.
Anyone who missed the first show got to catch my second act "MY OTHER HALF" because when she was done, she had to cut off my shirt and bra so the doctor could examine me when he got around to it. Without covering me up in any way, she then left me there in the "supply room" for about an hour with my arms strapped down. All I could hear (but thankfully not see as I was still only staring at the ceiling) was people coming in and mumbling "Oh!...sorry..."

The x-rays and cat scans were the worst though. They sent me back four times and although there was a sheet under me and my neck hadn't yet been "cleared" NO ONE would help me get on and off the table. They made me wiggle excruciatingly across the stretcher onto the table screaming all the way. The tech was pissed that it took me so long and kept yelling at me to hurry it up. During two of the x-rays, when I couldn't get into the position that he wanted me to, he told me...
"Your not going to like it if I have to get someone in here to YANK those arms down for you!"
and
"Im just going to have to pull all your hair out if you don't get your head up higher!" (He was trying to shove one of those film things under my neck)

I did at that point go off on him and Im embarrassed to say I dropped a couple of "F" bombs. He just calmly leaned over my face and said "I can't work with someone who is so uncooperative" and left me there for twenty minutes....

Oh..there is more but these are just the highlights...

My main concern was that they were worried that my spleen was ruptured. I spent a lot of the time praying, "Please God, don't let me have to have surgery here. I'm too young to die!" When I found out it was just seriously bruised...hallelujah!!!!

When my mom arrived she argued with me. The doctor DID NOT want me released. She didn't think I should leave the hospital as I was seriously injured (I had a lot of lung bruising from chest trauma). I kept saying I was afraid to sleep because I thought I would wake up dead but I don't think she believed it was that bad until....

The nurse came back just then to remove my catheter because my neck was cleared as "not broken" so I could use a bedpan now. She actually just grabbed the tube and said " Grit your teeth! 1..2..3" and YANKED it out as hard as she could! (Did anyone in Rochester hear me scream at about 10:00pm the night of July 11?)

When the Doctor came back to the room my mom said " I AM taking her home NOW! "

Finally!