( totally unrelated photo of the boys in their half-finished Halloween costumes, going back a few years) "We are the Knights Who Say.....Nnnnutella!"
It’s fashionable in the PF blog-o-sphere to bellyache about the sorry state of our medical system (and with “our”, I mean these United States). It’s too expensive, not universally accessible, too many needless tests, drugs too readily prescribed, on and on… But when you’ve got a #2 screwdriver stuck through your head, we want good emergency room medicine, and we want it NOW!
This past weekend saw a trip to the Siloam Springs Memorial Hospital in Western Arkansas to treat an eye injury. Briefly, I ran smack into a rusty clothesline wire at eye level. I made sure to catch the wire neatly across my right eye, my feet flying out and landing flat on my back (almost comical, really). After the pretty multicolored stars cleared, my vision turned red. With the blood flowing, I ran inside the house into the bathroom to wash the eye out, and check for damage. Sure enough, the eyelid looked torn or cut in a couple places. The eyeball looked OK and my vision seemed unimpaired, but the feeling/sound of the wire scraping across the eye socket, transmitted through the skull directly into the brain, wasn’t to be easily dismissed. Right then, off we go to the hospital.
Being early in the morning, I roused the wife and kids from slumber. On a Sunday, the clinic in our small town was closed, so we had about a 12-mile ride to the nearest hospital. Brief moment of inquiry while we called the hospital for directions, and off we went. I was treated within an hour, and off on our way with a rakish eye bandage that duly impressed the boys.
A few observations about the whole experience:
Even in a small town of about 20,000 such as Siloam Springs, the hospital was excellent. The rooms were clean, the staff professional and attentive, and the wait to get in was minimal. Billions of people around the world couldn’t dream of having such quality care so immediately available.
The speed of treatment was more of a function of a small-town hospital. Had this occurred in a Tulsa hospital, the wait might have been more like a couple hours. As it was, the attending doctor showed up for an initial examination not five minutes after I was ushered my room. He had a more pressing case, needing to sew up car accident victim, but he assured me he would return as soon as he could – which proved to be only about twenty minutes. The doctor and the attending nurse then proceeded to examine my eye under a cool-looking black-light device, and pronounce it free of trauma (lucky guy!). The top eyelid had about a quarter-inch tear right in the middle, and the outside edge of the eye also had a clean cut, which could stand a stitch or two – or not, it was up to me, as by the location of the cut the top and bottom lids compressed anyway and would heal by themselves given a little time (I opted for no stitches).
Washing out injuries with well water is a no-no. As a result, I’m on a topical antibiotic treatment. I had touched my eye with my undoubtedly dirty hand immediately after the injury to check for blood. That was was bad enough, but as it turned out, washing out the eye in the bathroom sink was an even dumber move. Pathogens can and do exist in well water, you see. Memo to self: hurry up on getting that water filtration system.
In an emergency room, we’re not going to quibble with treatment options. Tetanus shot because of a possibly rusty wire? Let me roll up my sleeve! Topical antibiotics? Sign me up, Doc!
We wasted some time in finding out the location of the nearest emergency room. While the situation wasn’t critical, it’s still good planning whenever moving into a new town or city, to not only know the location of the nearest emergency room, but actually do a dry run.
All in all, there’s a lot to be thankful for. Thankful I didn’t hit that clothesline wire a fraction of an inch lower, thankful that the ER was so wonderfully equipped with fancy black-light exam lamp and staffed by very competent people, thankful that I have good insurance, and thankful that I’m able to take off Monday on short notice to recuperate. I’m also thankful that I get to write these thoughts on this here blog, and thankful that I’ve built up a small but consistent number of readers (bite me, Alexa ranking!).
By the way, here’s some worthwhile links from around the Yakezie:
Beating the Index: Saudi Arabia Oil – Breakeven Price Rising
Molly on Money: The Greenhouse
Financial Samurai: Are You A Financial Dumb-Ass?
Squirrelers: Is There A Silver Bubble? How High Can Silver Prices Go?
Money Reasons: The Three Little Financial Pig: Pig #2 Update
Retire By 40: An Easy Way To Get Internet Coupons
Minting Nickels: Cutting The Cord, A Saga (Part 1)
MoneyCone: So Someone Tried To Use My Credit Card To Buy A Laptop
DYI Investor: Monetizing The Debt
The College Investor: Being Financially Independent: A Charity In Itself?
Everyday Tips & Thoughts: How the Closure of the Last Typewriter Factory May Relate to You
YesIAmCheap: The Battle Over a Fiduciary Standard for Financial Advisors
Darwin’s Money: Crowd Sourcing Fail!
Debt Free by Thirty: Chow Time!
Afford-Anything: How To Marry A Prince
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading.
PS: The SS Memorial Hospital called me at home for a follow-up and customer survey. Try getting that kind of service out of a big-city hospital. They also asked me if I could recommend them to anyone else. Certainly! If you’ve got a #2 screwdriver stuck in your head, the ER in the SS Memorial Hospital is the place to go. 
101- I am totally squeamish about eyes and almost started screaming as I read your post. I am so glad your eyeball is ok, but I know I am going to have bad dreams tonight now.
Thanks for including my link though. I am glad your hospital experience was good, although I had to skim through a lot because I was afraid of what I might read. Take care of yourself.
I am glad you got a tetanus shot. It probably had the pertussis (aka whooping cough) vaccine it too, so you are good to go!
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Kris – I purposely left out some of the gorier details. Still, sorry for the bad dreams.
I didn’t know that the tetanus shot had some added protection (whoop!).
I have always had this fear, since childhood, that I would impale my eye on something. We used to have a set of stairs that a nail head was sticking out right at eye level and I would always watch it in fear of poking my eye.
Glad to hear you didn’t hit your eyeball, makes me nauseous just thinking about it. I can hear that noise too.
Our healthcare system does need improvement, but sometimes I feel like I don’t have the right to complain because we haven’t had to pay for anything but a cavity. Our insurance is through the military and while it can be a pain (referrals, moving, finding PCM’s) it has covered everything that we have gone through.
Hi Niki – it could always be worse. Mrs. 101 and I once spent hours and hours one evening in Italy trying to get medicine for a yeast infection. The pharmacies were closed and we had to drive all over creation and back, to finally roust an on-call country pharmacist out of bed past midnight to open up and get us what we needed.
Ouch 101c! I’m glad you are Ok! I was beginning to wonder where you were!
Get well soon!
-MC
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Thanks – spent most of the weekend digging and planting. Love the springtime.
Arrgh! I love the eye patch! How you got your eyepatch on the other hand sucks. Get better so you don’t have to walk around sayin’, ‘holy shipmates!’.
It gives all the reasons to consume grog! Avast, mateys!
Oh man, that sounds frightening! Our last emergency room visit was just of the bead up the nose variety.
Hey, I remember one of those. Our youngest once swallowed a toy truck. On Thanksgiving. Right before carving the turkey.
I am glad the eye is OK 101! that was a close call. Thankfully, I recognized it wasn’t that bad since I was reading your thoughts on here.
Get well soon!
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Thanks for the well wishes. The bandage came off this morning (it was bugging me), and follow up visit tomorrow.
Yikes, that was a close call! I’m glad it wasn’t too bad and you didn’t have to wait long for help. My husband spent 5 hours in the ER with a stomach bug because the urgent care wouldn’t give him a Cipro prescription. You do look like a pirate now.
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Hi Jennifer – when the admissions nurse asked me what my pain level was, I told it was a 10. She looked at me and said, really? I replied, no, not really, it’s only about a 4, but maybe it’ll get me in faster if I say it’s a 10. We both had a laugh over that one, since I was the only one in line.
Sorry to hear about your husband, 5 hours spent waiting *anywhere* is no fun at all.
That is some awesome service. I’m glad to hear that everything is OK; I would have been frightened to hell with an injury like that.
With the healthcare system the way it is here my grandmother may have to wait at least 3 months for a head scan after having had severe headaches for more than a week, and her friend may have to wait at least a month for an important surgery. What a cruel joke…
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Hi Kevin, I sure was sweating until the doctor pronounced the eye OK. I found out yesterday from the follow up visit that the black light thingie was to check if the fluorescent die they poured in the eye (which stung like fire, by the way) stuck to any little micro abrasions or cuts. Pretty cool.
I know of other stories of folks waiting months and months for operations. Back in the old country, my grandfather opted to pay for cancer treatment at a private hospital out of his savings rather than wait for the state health system, which would have been months and months. His reasoning was that he’d be dead and buried by the time they got around to giving him a slot. He did later pass on, but not from cancer.
Arrrr, matey. It’s good to hear you are doing OK. I wouldn’t want to mess with the eyes either. Thanks goodness for the ER. Let us know how much the bill was and how much did you have to pay. When you’re hurt money is no object! Thanks for the mention!
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Hi rb40 – I’ll be sure to watch out for the bill and post it. I’m also curious to see how much our share is.
I think most folks who’ve had to use it would agree that the ER care here in the U.S. is top notch. That doesn’t mean one doesn’t have a long wait at times, but the actual *care* is great. It’s the general, day to day services that suck. Doctors can’t afford to spend time with patients and what little time they do spend with one seems to be focused on figuring out which prescriptions to write. Glad to hear you’re getting better already!
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Hi Linda – thanks for stopping by. We’re lucky that our family GP is not the rushy-rushy kind, but I do hear of other folks having just that problem. Our GP is not currently taking any patients, he’s happy with the ones he’s got. I got the follow-up visit scheduled within a day, and didn’t have to wait more than 10 minutes… just barely long enough to nod off in the waiting room (afternoon doldrums).
Thanks for including my article!
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OMG, I still remember when my oldest scratched my eyeball with his fingernail about 20 years ago. The totally neatest thing was that when the bandage came off about a week or so later, I had super 20/20 vision in that eye that was bandaged. It took only a day to go back to normal (ie. bad).
Glad everything is “looking” pretty.
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