This is true. It’s just not always necessary to go to an emergency room to see one. Doctors are found in private offices and walk-in clinics, as well, and they can provide the same diagnostic and prescriptive support at far less cost and without what might be a 4-6 hour wait.
That’s true. In fact, my insurance coverage is much better if I go to a 24-hour urgent care center than if I go to the emergency room (I only pay my co-pay if I go to urgent care, vs. 50% in the emergency room…unless I’m hospitalized). They can dispense the same medications and order the same tests, and even handle a lot of emergency procedures, and if you really need to go to the hospital, they’ll tell you.
The wait is a factor too. In our area, there’s only one hospital, so someone with something not obviously, immediately life-threatening can wait many hours before seeing a doc. Not much for it…obviously accident victims, people suffering heart attacks or strokes, etc. need to be seen first, but if you’re feeling really ill, sitting for hours in an emergency facility can be exhausting.
Redwolf
I had a situation a year or so ago that went from “bad cold” to Mycoplasma pneumonia. I’d been out preg-checking cows every day for about three weeks with the junk…walking pneumonia. Got a good chewing out from the doctor and got myself seriously sick by screwing around with it.
Don’t give it too much more time especially if it gets to be a lung issue. Also, if the throat thing doesn’t clear up you’d best get a culture.
Doc
I can’t say what a hospital would do in your case, naturally.
But once when my son was really sick, and couldn’t keep anything down, they basically put in IV drip in for hydration, gave him some anti-emetics, observed him a bit til his fever went down.
I have only had influenza once. Most people use the word “flu” synonymous with “cold” but they are not the same at all. The flu has you laying on the floor in so much pain and with so little energy you are begging to die.
I’d go to the doctor tomorrow if you don’t feel any better tomorrow, or if you feel even worse. The worst that will happen is you’ll pay a bunch of money for nothing.
In the adventure I related I mentioned that it was on my 3rd visit to the Dr.'s office in 3 days when the Dr. told me to go to the ER for treatment.
The ER ran tests and got a diagnosis from the tests within an hour or so.
The Dr. had run the same tests on my first visit but the results came back a week later.
I don’t think the Dr.'s office was prepared to have me sit around with an IV getting rehydrated either.
Every one’s experience will be uniquely their own,
but I will say over the years I have had some rather dramatic health adventures.
Usually while I was going through them I didn’t think the situation was half as bad as I realized they were once I started to recover.
Actually, when I was growing up, people used “flu” as synonymous with “stomach virus.” I was 20-something before I learned that influenza is primarily a respiratory illness! For most of my life, I associated “flu” with “throwing up.”
That said, anyone who’s ever had flu will never confuse it with a cold. For one thing, the fever that accompanies flu puts it in a whole different category.
Redwolf
Here’s a nice site for repectable information . . . The Merck Manuals. They are free, searchable, and provide hours of entrancing reading.
In the upper right corner, there is a link to the several manuals. You’ll find there is one for home use, one for your doctor to use, one for your elderly relative’s geriatrician, one for your dog . . .
DONT READ IF YOU ARE TIRED OF HEALTHCARE ANECDOTES, I DON"T BLAME YOU BUT FEEL OBLIGATED TO PROVIDE ONE TO CLOSE THIS THREAD:
After suffering until my regular doctors office was closed (Saturday) and no other referred doc would see me, I finally ended up at Alta Bates Emergency Room, too weak to drive meself cause I hadn’t slept much i three nights.
Check in: 11:10, Into reception 11:20, into exam room: 11:30, 20 minutes or so wait and change into funny gown..Noon. Perky med insurance verifier comes in, gets med card returns in about 15 minutes. Nurse comes in to tell me physicians assistant would be by shortly. 1hour, 30 minutes later, PA comes in it;s now after 2 (this same guy had come in for the guy next door about 15 minutes after I was told he was coming. Then he went out in the hallway and bsed with the nurses for about 20 minutes, only to go away.. After exam, and listen, tells me my lungs sound wet and might have some kind of upper rep. infection, better get an ex-ray. He will probably proscribe the home inhaler thingy. I mention antibiotics (which I already heard him tell a guy who has been hacking for 10 days that he should just wait a bit more, because he wasn;t sure it was an infection after all (this poor sucker sounded like he had one foot in the grave). I tell him that I promise not to take them until my face feels like its going to fall off (I have a history of wintry sinus infections which start as allergic reactions to mold I think). I figure, the worst thing I do is throw 'em away, but at least I don’t have to return to any hellish doctor experience.X-ray at about 3. Back to bed. wait until about 3:40. PA comes back. Tells me it’s just a head cold (which 52 years Wednesday tells me that I have vastly underrated what a head cold is for my f#$%ing entire life). X-rays okay. He agrees to give me a respiratory treatment and home inhaler. Denies antibiotics. I beg, he agrees if I promise NOT to take 'em (as stated earlier)i wait and wait. at 4:30, the resp. guys shows up. The highlight of my visit!! It was wonderful, breathing that misty stuff. I haven’t breathed that good in oh, four years or so. I ask the guy, can I leave?? Oh no, you have to wait for the nurse. I say, “do you have my prescription ready.” And I quote: It’s right outside! So I stand at the doorway, because my kids don’t know where I am and the cell phones are blocked in that room because of equipment. At 4:55 the nurse comes by and says I can go. “Do you have my prescription?” Oh yeah, its a real prescription, just the paper, not the meds. Where do I fill it. Oh anywhere late on a Saturday afternoon.
Inserted note: No there were no bleeding emergencies, earthquakes, fires or shootings that day that ended in that ER (it’s not the gunshot hospital anyway). My room was right opposite the nurse stations, so I could hear every conversation, etc etc. Restaurants, tv shows, basketball, etc etc. No tension, no code blues, no scrambling gurneys and gear., Three patients came and went in the curtained portion next to me. Two had bad coughs like me.
Wanting to get the HELL out of there and pick up my kid, I opt for a drug store (instead of their hospital pharmacy)by my house that has my info. Go by there. Sorry, we are closing, you can pick it up tomorrow. We open at 10. Bbbut, I have a rehearsal tomorrow at 11 and (I know damn well it won’t be ready at opening moment) the gates probaby arent’ even swung open until 10:10. After a huge rehearsal of coughing and apologizing (I am the director of the group, with a huge talking and singing gig on Saturday starring me, and with a new guy at first practice with group), I finally got my prescription at 3:30 today. Got that inhaler and sucked on that baby. Sigh… nothing like that plug-in one. No heady feeling, and sound of music lungs..
Thing is, I didn’t die without the meds and probably didn’t need 'em, but they made me sit there just long enough so I couldn’t get them that day anyway(even though the home inhaler is nothing like that soma mist I got there in the hospital). I did get a bit better in those hours in the hospital, because the chills weren’t quite as bad the night before I went.
I am now at the stage where you think you’re getting better, but might get worse if it settles in to some little snot nodule in my sinuses and rots probably in about 2 days or so. Been there, done that.But, I have antibiotics!! Whoops, they proscribed me AMOXICILLIN! The worthless antibio for kids earaches (you know, the one that makes your kid cry harder?). At least it wasn’t the bubblegum flavor liquid form. Just the horsepill size one. Maybe I should drink some anti-bio hand soap instead if I need it…
Remember that I am a guy who never goes to hospitals and I really did not want to go but I felt sooo bad this time. My doctor always tells me I am one of the healthiest patients she has in her practice because my visits average about once every two years over the long haul.. I have drawn groups at the treadmill, while the staff watched in amazement as the fat guy made it to the end at the steep angle without keelin’ over (I mountain bike and such).
I experienced “wait therapy.” And by gawd, I am improving!
PS. Under the terms of my health insurance, I have to tell my doctor within 24 hours that I went or else I have to pay the full ER bill. Called my docs office at 9 a.m.. Answering service person picks up. "I’d like to leave a message for Dr. W that I went to the ER yesterday at 11. “Sorry, I can’t take a message.” “Can I leave a voice mail?” No, sorry. Puhleeze, just put me through? Uh. no. What can I do. “I wil have her on-call physician call you back.” SO I CAN LEAVE A MESSAGE. So some doc has to abandon his ham-n-eggs just to be a message-boy… He was a good sport about it and acted interested, even though I will never see him in real life.
So now you know the rest of the story. Thanks for those tips though, they do sound helpful. Frankly, after getting through all of January and most of February, I thought I had made it past the only time of year that I ever get sick.
Oh yeah, and I lost five pounds in three days! Yee haw. Wore my next step down skinnier pants today…
Hackingly yours (it only hurts my lungs and throat when I laugh),
The NorovirusWestNileAnthrax-laden Weekender.