ER visit testimony
Last Friday, suffering chest pains, my nephew drove me to the Olympic Medical Center emergency room.
The waiting room was packed when I arrived at 1 p.m. I told the registrar I was in acute chest pain.
The physician confirmed my suspicion that I was suffering gastritis, not a heart attack.
So I was sent back out to wait.
Once in a while a nurse would lead us back for a test.
At 8:30 p.m., I informed the nurse that I was in acute pain.
At 8:49 p.m., according to my after visit summary, the nurse gave me a bottle of milk of magnesia mixed with Lidocaine.
It did nothing.
I was admitted to the ER and at 10:30 p.m., I was administered a morphine shot.
I asked if I might get another shot.
They did and at 11:59 p.m., the chest pain vanished.
I waited 11 hours for OMC to relieve my acute pain, Dante’s Inferno.
I am recovering, will change my diet, exercise, lose weight.
I read in the PDN that Sound Physicians is struggling to recruit more physicians, but the story did not say how much Sound Physicians is offering in pay and benefits.
The OMC spokesman says it is a national crisis not exclusive to OMC.
We pay more for health care than any other nation and it still does not deliver care as a basic human right.
My bill at OMC is covered by traditional Medicare.
I say “Medicare For All. Everybody in, nobody out.”
Tim Wheeler
Sequim