I do not particularly like being in a hospital; the last time I was in one, they pretty much ignored me an hour while I slowly bled out from a gash on my forehead (which was strategically placed on my eyebrow). I had received the gash from a fight; a girl hit me for no good reason and I hit her back with reason, which led her to grab a brick and hurl it at my head, hitting me right on the eye.

Jay, a good friend of mine, called the cops and they arrested Brick Girl. We later found out that she was high on some kind of drugs (aren’t they always?) and was mad at her boyfriend for cheating, but decided to take it out on me because I looked like the girl he was cheating on her with and in her drug induced haze she actually thought it was me.

Afterwards she apologized profusely to me and begged me not to press charges because she was already going up for drug possession (they found some additional stuff on her) and her parents would kill her if they found out, not to mention that she’d be ridiculed by her boyfriend, who actually, I found out, turned out to be Mister Jackass 2007 and had cheated on her not once, not twice, but three times in a month., yes, in one month.

So I decided to not file charges, if, and only if, she paid my medical bills. She agreed and here I am writing about it. I promise that this actually does have a point, and I am getting there.

As I said earlier, I had to wait an hour in a waiting room, a waiting room that was filled with drunks, homeless people, junkies, little girls, and elderly and it got me thinking about how people are treated in Emergency Waiting Rooms.

I certainly wasn’t treated fast enough for a head wound that kept bleeding. They even had the nerve telling me that it wasn’t a priority because I was still sitting up and wasn’t showing any signs of dizziness from blood loss and that I could “hold out for a little longer”.

Excuse me? Do I need to faint in order for them to see how serious it actually was?

While I am no medical doctor and have no experience whatsoever on this, I certainly do know that when blood is dripping through the fourth (!) gauze and slowly pooling on the floor it needs to be looked at before something really bad happens. Yes, they actually did give me gauzes to stop the bleeding.

Now mind you, this actually was not one of the better hospitals around, but I will not name names.

While Jay was fretting over me like a mother frets over their child when it gets hurt, saving me from going crazy and explode at the doctors and nurses, I had a good chance to look at all the people in the Waiting Room and how they were treated and how they treated their fellow patients and a thought crossed my mind.

Yes I do have rational thoughts on occasion.

Though it was not actually a whole thought; more of a title for a blog. ‘The Waiting Room files’. It would feature stories from various ER Waiting Rooms, the mistreatment from doctors and nurses and other patients’ stories that I will relay through my eyes and ears as I saw them happening. No censor.

Of course I will also tell you about the good things that actually happened, after all, we do need a little hope that our caretakers are doing exactly that, taking care of me.

I do have to give out props to the folks of No Borders Allowed for giving me the chance. I had tried various other sources, but most were not willing to put their asses on the line even though I wouldn’t name any of the hospitals nor the doctors, nurses and patients.
I will have my own little place, but ‘The Waiting Room Files’ will be part of the No Borders Allowed network.

There you have it in a nutshell, well not exactly a nutshell, but you get the point.

Note: In order to protect the privacy of the people I write about and myself, my identity and that of the people I write about will be either changed or removed. I will be known simply as ‘The Patient’.