Contributed by Nasa.

As I said in Part 1, the reason I'm writing these blogs is mainly because of the fact that I'm just getting into my 30's and I know a lot of people my age, but even younger, may have their first hospital stays soon (hopefully not) and I wanted to share what that was like.  I also wanted to share how stretched our Health Care System is since the Reform debate continues.

At the end of Part 1, I had just gotten to the Emergency Room.  I had passed out twice, semi-vomited, was running a 2 day or so fever and my stomach was in knots.  I was in pretty bad shape.  My wife rode threw red lights to get me there faster, I was starting to feel nauseous again, and the last two times I felt that way I blacked out.  We were of course expecting a huge volume of people in the waiting room, but to our surprise there really weren't any patients in the waiting area.  We also didn't see any nurses.  I got set down on a chair, while my wife talked to the Security Guard, he then went off to fetch the triage nurse.  Triage is traditionally a station where you are seen as soon as you walk in, then they can access how fucked up you really are and place you in line.  Where was this person?  As I sat there, I knew I was in need of an IV with fluids, I needed it badly.  Despite the fact that there was no one else in front of me, it took a full 20 minutes until the triage nurse came back to the station that she was supposed to be in.  20 minutes waiting to pass out.  Bull shit.

I finally was called in, she directed me to the back after asking me some questions, she basically walked rudely about 10-20 steps ahead of me while I confusedly followed her.  I finally was seated on an examination table in a room in the ER area.  I basically fell asleep in there.  Eventually a PA (Physician's Assistant) came in, she listened as I explained what was wrong and she immediately hooked me up to an IV with fluids.  "Finally", I thought, "a professional that can help me".  A few minutes later one of the Doctors that was on duty came in.  They both said I looked terrible and was pale.  Those that know me, know that I typically am pale.  I haven't been to a beach in a bathing suit since I was about 6 years old.  Me and Sun don't see eye to eye much.  In any case, I must have looked like a crack head up in there.  I should say I was rocking my Pink Floyd PJ bottoms at the time, because the situation was so dire, we had to leave right away from home.  Nice. 

The doctor started to feel my abdomen, when I told him I thought maybe I had the flu, he quickly dismissed that theory.  He said it was more likely that I had some sort of "intestinal infection" and that I'd probably have to be admitted. 

Wow, I totally didn't expect that at all.  I thought I had the flu, maybe even the Swine Flu, I figured they'd give me fluids a prescription and kick me out.  Some diagnosis I came up with.  I've been to the hospital for visits many times, between my wife, my mom and my dad I've seen many people in the hospital for extended stays.  Some times my visits for my wife would be so long, it felt like I was in the hospital too.  BUT, I had never personally gone through it and been that person in the bed.

At that point, they needed to do tests, no final diagnosis was reached that soon.  I fell back asleep on the exam seat until I was woken up by a loud nurse that announced they needed the room and needed to get me into a gurney anyway, an "exam table was no place to leave me".  I was put into a gurney and wheeled off from the room within the ER.  I was then placed in the hallway of the ER.  This hospital had just redone their whole ER section, it was sprawling.  I was situated in the hallway right by the main nurses station, which had a loud television right near me that had readings of patients of some sort on it and beeped like a fucked up version of Super Mario Brothers.  It was like you'd fall asleep and hear a loud ass analog synth key held down for like 5 seconds.  As I got my bearings I realized there were lots of people lined up like parked cars all around me on that hall way wall.  In fact there were several dozen people lined up this way through out the entire ER wing.  That was in addition to the lucky few that actually were in rooms in the ER and there was a fair amount of them.

I was told this is where I was to stay until I received a room upstairs for my stay.  When I asked how long that might be, I was met with answers that translated as "a long time from now, who knows".  Under normal circumstances, this might have pissed me off.  But I was so ill at the time and so worried about what could be wrong, that I just rolled with it.  A lesson I would be re-taught later as well. 

My wife sat on a chair next to my gurney through the night.  We arrived there at about 4:30am, the Sun rose without us seeing it, and at about 10:00am or so, some nurses came to start drawing more blood and run more tests.  We were both really tired and uncertain how long we'd be in this hallway or when I'd get a room or most importantly what was wrong with me. 

In Part 3, I'll get into some of the other extremes I saw that have to do with the stress that our hospitals are under and how our system is shockingly broken.  I'll also talk more about what specifically was wrong.