Cook County Hospital Rules!!!

Rachel & I spent about 7 hours in the emergency room of the John H Stroger Jr Hospital yesterday, and boy was it fun!  Seriously.  It was.

Rachel tripped and fell on a length of chain Friday night, and the executive decision was made around noon Saturday to head on down to the ER.  Since checking in to the hospital alone with a bum arm is the sucks, I escorted her.  Cook County is the hospital for us low-income, insurance-less folk, and it's ten kinds of insanity.  However, aside from having to deal with its maddening maze of dirty waiting room after waiting room after waiting room filled with a cacophony of colorful characters, we actually had sort of a good time.  Mind you, I wasn't the one who, pain-medicine free, sat for over 14 hours with a fractured radial head while 8 different lab techs and nurses and helpers and secretaries and assorted other hospital staff instructed me to fill out forms with my non-dominant writing hand while about to pass out because someone had just accidentally knocked into my swollen elbow.  Rachel kicked some serious broken-arm ass yesterday.  

However, being at a hospital filled with certifiably insane folk is sort of awesome:  

• It's fun to be nosy and figure out why people are spending their entire Saturday afternoon in the waiting room of a random ER.  My sleuthing skills deduced that most of the dudes in there seemed to have headaches and/or alcohol problems.  

• It's a nice reminder that, while my place of employment is one serious shitshow of humanity, there are places that are far, far, far shitshow-er-y.  

• Every single doctor, nurse, tech, secretary, janitor, etc etc yesterday was an angel.  Seriously.  They were the most professional, supportive, positive, kind, talkative group of overworked public servants I have ever had the pleasure of doing business with.  All of that while being heinously understaffed, a dingy room full of about 100 odorous citizens, clutching their bags of garbage whilst talking to themselves, waiting to be seen.  Rachel and I spent a good part of our visit speculating about what a swell doc that Lindsay Petty must be, based on the compassion of the staff at Cook County.

• I got to help the doctor set Rachel's arm!!!  IT WAS AWESOME!!!

• A man shackled to his bed under the diligent watch of a DOJ correction's officer, who had gotten in a fight earlier in the day which had effectively crushed the delicate bones in his face, totally ogled us while Rachel was, 7 hours later, given her single Vicodin for the pain. I think we were probably the first chicks he had seen in some time. 

Unexpected highlight of my week! Thanks for inviting me along, Rachel! 

And, let's all take a moment to hope that when Rachel returns to Cook County on Tuesday for her follow-up appointment, she'll get to pick out a SWEET colored cast!