Well, what a day this has been! First off, let me set the stage by telling you that I haven't been to a doctor's office or hospital in at least 20 years for anything! From a recent broken hand (lay it flat on a table and smack the protuding bone back in place with your opposite fist, then TRY to use it a little more carefully for a few weeks!!) on back to other injuries and ailments that I just toughed out or treated myself at home. This morning, the battery on my current ride (and future donor vehicle) was dead and the shifter was jammed up, so the key couldn't come back out of the ignition...two poorly timed malfunctions at once...LOVELY! The shifter cable seized and the new alternator shorted out at the same time! Got the car pushed into the backyard and started working on it when I got a piece of metal (sliver) jammed in my thumb, completely under the skin. I cut around it a bit with a razor blade and got most of it out with the poor quality tools I have here, but couldn't get the last tiny piece, even after about twenty minutes of trying. My dad talked me into going to Emergency, and with great reluctance, I agreed! What a circus! They lead you from room to room and leave you sit for a half hour at each stop! Then THREE X-RAYS (Glad it wasn't a bullet wound!) and more waiting. Finally the doctor says that the x-rays show a piece of metal way deep inside my thumb, but nothing at all near the surface!!! THREE X-RAYS! I point to the little piece of metal that I can still plainly SEE (without the aid of THREE X-RAYS!) and ask him about THAT. He swabs it with some stuff (the nausia I feel now tells me it had some form of anti-biotic in it, even though I told him that I'm allergic to all of them and won't accept them!) and then he picks the metal out and says..."Yeah, that's about the size of the one you got further inside that we're gonna leave there...and look, this one is even magnetic...how bout that?!". THREE X-RAYS??? And he thinks there's some OTHER tiny piece of metal lodged way inside my thumb that's cool to stay there, but that the piece he picked out was just some sort of fluke that didn't show up in the THREE X-RAYS??? Nice guy, and a steady hand on the pick, but he needs to take a refresher course in x-ray reading and learn to listen when someone says "UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES GIVE ME ANY FORM OF ANTI-BIOTIC!!!!". If it's a choice between anti-biotics or death, I'll take death, vs uncontrollable vomiting for days on end!!! (And he thinks I'm going to believe him when he says the anti-biotics he perscribed won't affect me and that I need to take them! Ha Ha...as if THAT perscription is ever even going to get filled, much less taken!) Skip the hap-hazard tour of the hospital's many waiting rooms, skip the 20 questions routine and the Marx Brothers act with every nurse and orderly on the floor, skip the THREE X-RAYS, skip the anti-biotics...and just pick out that piece of metal that I can see plain as day with MY crappy eyes, please! I hope it's ANOTHER 25 years or so before I ever have to set foot in a hospital again! (Did I tell you they took THREE X-RAYS?? Ha Ha...and he never mentioned the broken bone that I set with my fist a few months ago!) I'm gonna go buy me some quality surgical impliments...so I can dig out the next one MYSELF!! Guess I won't make the Ididit open house tomorrow...what I get for going with a "super reliable" small block Chevy with TH-350 combo this time around!! Ha Ha!! Shoulda bought me another 2.8 Chevy V6 or small block Ford!! But...at the rate I'm fixing things and replacing parts on this heap, I'm gonna have me a brand new, fully rebuilt Chev soon!!
Wait till you get the bill for all that "expert" attention that you recieved.You just may want to make that "doctor" take a tour of the emergency room .
Yea! You think anti-biodics make you sick? When you get the bill, THEN you will be sick. And that is the sad truth.
Dude....I gotta say I wished I had of gone to the hospital sooner than I did when I got a steel sliver in my finger. I took it out on the grinder...2 weeks later I had a sausage for a finger that convinced me to hit the emergency department. Too little too late as now the hand is crippled.Seems the infection got into the knuckle joints and the tendon on my right salute finger. Now I can,t close the hand fully and lost all strength in it.Too make a fist I have to dislocate the finger which makes a gross popping sound when I do.The doctor said I will need a lot of therapy for my hand,I asked if I could just masturbate more......
Ha Ha...yeah, they said they'd send the bill to the house...so you KNOW it's gonna be a whopper! They must do that so you don't strangle them right there on the spot!
When I cut my finger off last November I ran into the ER entrance while the wife parked the truck. The receptionist had me take a seat for about 10 minutes until a "nurse" brought me into the back to fill out the paperwork. About this time, i started going into shock and told the "nurse" so. She was insistant on finishing the paperwork even though my wife had my insurance card and offered to fill out the paperwork while a doctor looked at me. i had to just about pass completely out in order to actually get the first tiny bit of medical help. As a side note, my shop at work is cleanier than the room in which they sewed my up.
Yep hospital ER's suck. month ago I was grinding under the A and felt some hot metal go in my ear. It bugged me pretty bad until I decided to go back into the garage and get my pickup magnet. It was the kind that was small and had a telescoping handel. I cleaned it off real good(you know how hard that is) and stuck it in my ear. it picked up 3 pcs of metal, and my ear quit hurting. I learned that trick when I went to the eye dr. yrs ago to get some metal out of my eye.
I've used the "magnet trick" before myself...works great in some instances! I also learned to wad up duct tape in a ball sticky-side-out and use it to dab an area and pull fine slivers and particles out of my skin. A carpenter taught me that one, and it works great! (I showed the tape trick to my boss...it pulls tiny little dog hairs, like the kind from Dobermans and such out of your hand real well too!) Ha Ha...you think metal hurts...try getting some GASOLINE in your ear sometime! That'll wake ya right up!! Ha Ha!!!
I had a 48 pontiac try to kill me last year, I was running new wires for tail/brake lights and forgot to grab the wire stripper off of the bench. Grabbed them, ealked back to the car and whammo caught the corner of the trunck lid right in the head....swore, winced and opened my eyes and realized I couldn't see out of my left eye because blood was gushing from the gash on my head...went in the house took a shower put some oinment on the cut and went back to work on the car...my wife saw it later and made abig deal so I went to the doctor and he said he would have stiched it up but it was too late at that point
Holy shit, I thought I was the only one who had done that. By far, the WORST pain EVER to come out of my garage. - Matt
Wait till you get a MRI with metal in your skin. Fuckohdear, felt like my arm was on fire. You might want to check the ground from your motor to the chassis. I'll bet your two malfunctions were one.
Hospitals just plain suck. It's amazing how long they make a person sit there that really needs looked at right away. I got fired from a job, got another, went on vacation back home in Ore. for a couple weeks, while there stepped on a nail, then ground the top of my foot with a wire wheel on one of them big assed drills (I still say it's cause my dad said be careful that thing'll bite ya), got back to GA, got fired from that job, lived in my van, finally got unemployment and found a cheap house to live in, my back went out and then the first place that fired me came to my house and asked me back to work. Couldn't turn it down or I'd lose the unemployment I'd just gotten finally after 3 months. I just told her well, don't expect much out of me for a while! The foot was healed on the outside but not inside so it was like walking on a ball because of infection I think. Mixed up some bread and milk for a poultice, smacked a gob on the bottom of my foot, wrapped it with a bandana and stuck a plastic bag over it for the night. Next morning good as new! That remedy worked for a knife wound I had in my hand once that was getting infected and it worked great when I was a kid for the big gross boils on my knees from crawling around in the dirt all the time. Some add ivory soap shavings to it also.
hell i've been the hospital so many times years ago that i knew most of the nurses by thier 1st names & normally got the same room for some odd reason. but ya need to ask the doc who looked at my blown out knee when he tried to straighten it when it was locked in place. lets just say he had a size 14 boot inprint in the middle of his white coat & slid down the way to rest a while. i told the dumb fuck what was wrong w/me & he just didnt believe that 12inch scar on my knee was from a surgery.... hell ur the 3rd person i've heard that say that works..wierd
You have got to be careful about where you go. Short version; I kept having chest pains last year & would go to the ER. They kept telling me I had stomach acid reflux. After having several trips to the ER in about 5 months it got to where I was losing strength and knew something was not right. Went to a cardiologist at another hospital. Turns out I had 70% blockage in two areas of my heart. They put stents in & now I take pills everyday,life is good. If you have doubts about the medical care you are recieving, go somewhere else! Gary 4T950 Chevy Guy
Yeah, hospitals vary and doctors vary. I know someone who's been an ER doctor off and on. It's actually worse for them if they spot an error and correct an older, experienced doctor, than if they ignore it and let the asshole kill someone. Of course it didn't help her to be a woman doctor, either. There's a pretty good old boys network going on. Which beats me, I'd rather have a woman doctor I would think. If nothing else it's not quite so bad when you go in for a physical and have to cough for them.
You know the difference between God and a Doctor is.... God doesn't go around telling everbody he's a Doctor! s.
Yeah, but you sure can hear alot better afterwards. Ending up in the hospital is karmas way of getting you back for not posting for the last few weeks. Watch out for the mutant spiders and wolverines lurking in the dark corners of the donor car.
Until last month my job was to count the screw ups and figure out what can be done to keep the hospital from being sued. How about...they fire ANYBODY that says anything "bad" about one of the doctors. The good news...they only kill about a half dozen people a year with their malpractice.
The Jalopy Journal
