Ambulance + Emergency Room == common cold

We spent 5 hours in the emergency room last Thursday for a common cold. Wondering why?

V got sick right after I felt better - seems the common cold has been vacationing between us the last two weeks. It started from a flight to Atlanta, which got him sick, then it came to me and then inside of me, the common cold got stronger and more powerful, became uncommon and extraordinary, so when it got back to him, it took much more time to cure it.

Thursday he stayed at home from work since he didn't feel well - I made him a porridge (a really good one, full of rice, carrots, green onions, fish and shrimp, really tasty and delicious) then I went to work. Then around 1 pm, he was feeling worse with the fever (NyQuil doesn't do aaaaanything to it) so I decided to take him to the doctor/clinic since his condition was getting worse.

At first, we went to Allina hospital, but they said they had no walk-in clinic, only the emergency room, and of course we didn't think we needed the emergency room so we asked where the nearest walk-in clinic was. They told us to go to a small Allina clinic nearby. We went there, but there we were told they could not provide us a walk-in treatment before 5pm, only by appointment. And all the doctors were already busy. So finally we decided to go to my old workplace building since they have a Minute Clinic over there. All of this driving around for 1 hour was not pleasant at all, we had to park, walk in through the cold, get rejected over and over, and V was running a fever of 102'F (39'C) the whole time.

When we got to the clinics, the nurse checked him out and she said nothing serious and he just have a common cold which usually suck for the first 2 days. His temperature was pretty high, so he needed to take Tylenol or Ibuprofen. He got checked for flu and strep throat and meningitis and it was none of those things. Good, right?

We were at our last minutes of visit, the nurse was printing us the prescription, V buttoned up his coat nice and tight, getting ready to stand up when suddenly he told me that he needed to lean his head on my shoulder and... whoops, lost his consciousness. The nurse told me to hold his head while we kept calling his name. That time I knew the procedure at my work when someone faints, ERT team will be summoned, then the ambulance will come. So the nurse called ERT, and a pile of ERT people just came. They took his name and his condition, then they put him on the floor and gave an oxygen mask.

Note: ERT == Emergency Response Team - the people at my work who volunteer to be called when any medical emergency event is triggered. They have knowledge of CPR and basic first aids. They also carry emergency bags which contains bunch of first aids (such as bandage, glucose paste, oxigen, AED, etc etc - many many things - each bag is quite heavy and big). Each bag is located near exit area/printing room, so they just grab the bag when they are summoned. How do I know all this stuff about them? Because I am one of them!! :) Yup yup we are fully trained, everyone!!! with many skills, how to help injurer people, how to use an Automatic External Defibrillator... and don't worry, you can always reject our help - we are just good Samaritans.

Before the ERT team got there, V had regained consciousness, laying down on the floor. After he gained more consciousness, the ambulance and medical guys came - they asked what happened and his history. They asked if he wanted an ambulance to hospital or not - Actually I was so sure that V was ok and no need to go to ER at all. But the medical guys scared us by saying it could be a heart problem or a blood-sugar problem (diabetes) and that he could faint again randomly and fall in a parking lot and injure his head, etc. etc., so they convinced him to go with them, on a stretcher, into the ambulance, and BACK TO THE SAME EMERGENCY ROOM WE HAD JUST VISITED EARLIER THAT DAY! Tragic irony.

I followed him to hospital and wondered why everything became big big huge expense/event suddenly.

I parked my car and was pointed to his room asap. He was laying on the bed and couple nurses were sticking 3M labels on him for ECG reading. They asked him same questions again (btw we had been answering each question 3 times by now) and they were doing more tests to him to ensure he was ok and his fainting was not caused by his heart or other factors. So while they were doing those things - we realized that the fainting was probably because he has not eaten any lunch and wore tooooooooo many layers of clothes - which were way too warm to be wearing something like that indoors.

They gave him a bag of IV fluid and attached him to many wires. V just felt dizzy but overall he looked fine. I asked him if it would be necessary to get all the tests - and finally told the nurse to hold off any further tests and request a doctor. The nurse was finished anyway, and then the doctor came in and asked the same set of questions again (4th time), and she said V just needed to take Tylenol and Ibuprofen for the fever and drink a Gatorade, wait until the IV was done to check if he would be better by then.

So we stayed several hours longer and a few of our friends dropped in to visit. They just wanted to make sure we were ok and no more help needed at that point. V was embarrassed of course.

After another 2 hours, they finaly released us. Nothing dangerous/serious, just needed couple small pills, our heroes - 600 gm of ibuprofen and 600 gm of Tylenol which would have cost us less than $4, actually, but now we have to pay a few times that...

Speaking of payments, the bills have not arrived yet - but this is a really nice experience for us. Ambulance ride for V was his Christmas gift. We still could not believe "600 gm of ibuprofen and 600 gm of Tylenol" would co$t u$ thou$and$ of dollar$ -- I will blog more when I receive the bills from hospital. That blog will be in all capital letters.

This incident has also caused us to cancel our flight to Atl. the next day since V was not feeling better yet - even now, he's still got achy muscles and chills. We had to cancel our tickets, suckkkkkk big time, more dollar$ flying out. The car rental was gone. We were bleeding money on Thursday hiks hiks hiks...

One day we will read this and hopefully laugh about it. I just hope we're not living in a cardboard box at that time.