![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
bubblegumsleaze.livejournal.comI've become convinced that people with social anxiety aren't in fact disordered. They're right. They really shouldn't leave the house. It's a horrific and insane world out there. I've also become convinced that seeking sanity wasn't good for my peace of mind, because now the horrors I see aren't imagined, but real, and I can't comfort myself with assurances that I only dreamed them up.
My friend Dave got in a car accident last Thursday, and he had some (minor?) bleeding in his lung. That's what they told him after he called 911 but could get nobody to come, walked home from the accident, called his doctor and met him at one of the few remaining open hospitals in New Orleans. They told him his ribs weren't broken, it didn't APPEAR that his lung was in any way punctured, and that the shadow they could see and the pain he felt were because of minor bleeding/bruising which would resolve in time on it's own. They sent him home with pain medication and instructions to come in if he should "start coughing up any pink frothy stuff."
There wasn't any froth, but by last night he couldn't breathe well enough to speak and was coughing up stuff that looked like tar. Later in the night he couldn't cough anymore. He called his doctor, who told him it sounded like his lung had collapsed, and to go back in.
When you take a city the size of New Orleans, submerge it, and then dry it out and reopen only 4 of it's 11 hospitals, the 4 that are open become insanely busy and crowded, and "in order of severity of symptoms" becomes entirely relative.
In this case, a man with a piece of a board through his arm, bone and arm guts completely on display, sits in the waiting room next to a man with a collapsed lung who's gasping out every word and breath while his body tries to cough but cant, and they watch hunting shows on tv together while they take turns helping the head wound victim with blood pouring down her face get new towels to soak up the blood, while they all three wait for the "serious" cases to be treated.
They learned how to hunt game birds, and how many times you have to fold a towel to make it a pressure dressing.
They watched an old man die.
They watched someone vomit, repeatedly, on the floor, ignored.
They watched people with fevers, cuts, sprains,bumps and bruises turned away at the door.
They saw a person with glass embedded in their eye be given a light bandage and told to make an appointment with a specialist on Monday.
They watched a teenage girl sit and shake and wondered what she'd taken, how much, and why nobody else seemed to be bothering with her.
They watched a little boy having repeated seizures in his mothers arms.
They watched a boy with a fish hook through his cheek finally get fed up with waiting and rip it out himself and leave.
The man with the wood in his arm wondered if he'd lose his arm.
The man with the collapsed lung bleeding into his chest wondered if he'd die the way the old man had, before anyone reached him.
The girl with the head wound didn't say anything at all, just held the towels they brought her to her head and hoped for the best.
It took 10 hours, and the man with the board in his arm had the foreign matter removed, the wound cleaned out, some kind of adhesive pourned all over it, and was sent home with instructions to come back if it turned black, green, white, or red. The man with the collapsed lung had a huge tube shoved into his chest to drain the blood out and re expand his lung, had an MRI and an X-Ray, a dose of IV antibiotics and was sent home with a bandaid and reassurance that "everything looked good."
The girl with the head wound was still sitting there, bleeding on the floor, when they left.
The dead man was still there too. I suppose dead comes in at the exact bottom of the priorities list.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}