Most of us are probably familiar with the television drama scene where the doctor, prim in his white lab coat, sits at his desk in his office with a husband and wife sitting across from him. The couple seems apprehensive, knowing that their doctor called them in to tell them something very serious. And then doctor gently breaks the news to the couple that the husband has cancer. When the couple hears the news, the wife softly sobs into her husband’s shoulder as the husband resolutely asks the doctor both what are his chances and what are his options. You can imagine how the rest of the story goes. It is a typical Marcus Welby M. D. scene. However, life is not a television show, at least it isn’t for me.
The Johns Hopkins University Hospital is located on the east side of Baltimore and the main hospital is very much an inner city hospital. So, after circling around the block several times in an effort to find a place to park, and after walking what seemed at least a mile in the rain (Can you feel the melodrama starting to seep in?), I entered the hospital way out of my element and more than a little upset about having a leg full of blood clots.
Languages other than English were being spoken. Even when English was being spoken, it was often as a second language. Other than the fact that I felt like I had entered a United Nations sponsored medical bazaar, the emergency room experience started out like most emergency room experiences: long periods of waiting while sitting in uncomfortable chairs in a crowded room full of loud conversations. Eventually, I made my way through the process: check in; vital signs taken and blood drawn; move to the next waiting room to be screened; screened; move to another waiting room to wait to be seen by the on duty physician; move to the curtain-enclosed room to meet with the on duty physician; more waiting.
By this time my wife had arrived. We both waited in the small room–a large nook with a hospital bed is a better description–behind a privacy curtain. The emergency room was busy and we heard all of its busy noises, including the on duty drunk moaning and complaining about something that I could not understand. Every time he would moan, someone would holler at him to hurry up and go to sleep. A nurse entered and quizzed me with a slew of questions while she poked and prodded with her fingers and hands and listened intently with her stethoscope. With the promise that the doctor would be seeing us soon, the nurse left my wife and me to continue our pondering as to why in the heck I had a leg full of blood clots.