The One With A Visit To The Emergency Room

Not content with just checking out Ottawa's Police Station, I also got to visit the Emergency Room of the Ottawa Hospital. There's nothing quite like settling down for an evening of last-minute revision and getting panicked Facebook message from Gabby saying that she's had blood gushing out her nose for the past million hours and she needs to go to hospital. Did someone say #YOHOYA?

Now it's time for a smug comparison of Canadian hospitals with the British NHS. First of all, we had to queue to get seen by a triage nurse to assess how likely Gabby was to suddenly keel over and need emergency surgery. Then we had to wait about half an hour to be seen by the insurance office. Then, because Gabby hasn't yet printed out her health insurance card, we spent another half an hour faffing about with money and addresses and the like. But the heart-warming moment when you're named as someone's next of kin is wonderful! Although, Gabs, please please don't let me have to do anything too serious with that role, please!



Then came another long wait. Like two hour long wait. At this point, Gabby, whilst looking super sexy in a plastic nose plug, had gone deathly white and had developed an accute headache focussed on one of her temples. Furthermore, there wasn't any water. Seriously. You can't move for freaking water fountains whenever you're on uOttawa's campus, but for some reason which I cannot fathom, at a hospital in the emergency room there is no water. Quite frankly, it's a miracle of epic proportions that I didn't get blood-stained chunder splashed over my feet as nausea took its toll on Gabby.

Finally, I got fed up with waiting, what with Gabby's deteriorating condition and got us moved into the treatment room. This was, without doubt, where the really fun stuff started happening. First of all, I sang Adele. I basically am Adele. Then Gabby and I did a great rendition of Ten Red Mounties Sitting on a Wall. You'd have thought by that point, a doctor would have come to see Gabby. No. After more hours of waiting, Gabby's headache took over and she lay down on the dirty floor and fell asleep.

Eventually, an orderly came and let us, I say us, let Gabby lie down on an actual bed. To be honest, bearing in mind the way he looked at my tits and not my face, if I didn't have an E cup, Gabby would still be lying on that grubby floor. As Gabby got comfy, muggins here got to do emergency revision for next day's exam in a freezing cold, eerie emergency room. For a place with the word 'emergency' in the title, it doesn't really act like it. More and more hours passed by before we were moved back into our former room.

Then, we met Dr Douchebag.

I don't know what Dr Douchebag's real name is. But he's a doctor and he's a douchebag, and I find alliteration has orgasmic qualities, so I like to use it a lot. Dr Douchebag couldn't care less about hours and hours of heavy bleeding from Gabby's nose, 'cause it's not like that's a symptom of a brain tumour or anything. Then, when I pointed out some of her other symptoms, he gave me the dirtiest look ever. "I'm only trying to help." "Really?"



Yes, sunshine, arse hole, douchebag, really. A note to any doctors: congratulations, you know how to regurgitate medical textbooks under exam pressure, bully for you. But, if you don't listen to the person your patient has brought with the, you might, screw that, will have missed something important. People aren't confined by medical textbooks. People have  medical histories and react to different environments and if I say something about Gabby wasn't right, I am trying to help. Because when someone has been bleeding for hours and freaking hours from their freaking face and I then give you other symtoms she has been exhibiting, it could be freaking well important you moronic, cock-sucking, freaking douchebag.

Never coming back here again.

And then, how dare you, you smug, shite, douchebag, mock us for not knowing what Tylenol and others meds are. For some reason, you Canadians think it's okay to use brand names for your meds. Meanwhile, over in the Motherland, y'know, the country that made yours, we call paracetemol by its actual freaking name.

And while we're on a rant, $650 for seven hours of waiting in a freezing cold emergency room, sleeping on a dirty floor, a couple of Tylenol and the biggest douchebag to have ever gone through medical school, it's a shambles. Long live the NHS. Because the treatment Gabby received was worth, at most, $50; however, because she is this thing called a human being and is therefore covered by the UN Declaration of Human Rights and therefore entitled to healthcare, over in Great Britain, we compassionate, non-morons know that means free health care.

Rant over.