Life in the fishbowl: UCDMC ER
Recently I had the (mis)fortune to visit the UC Davis Medical Center Emergency Room. It was an evening visit on one of these cold nights, and the place was packed. But not as packed as they expected later, when temperatures would be dropping into what felt like the teens–almost unheard of in Sacramento. The clerk said to me with a smile and a shrug, “That’s when all the good people will come in–” We both knew she meant. She meant the homeless, impaired, and otherwise similarly challenged.
Someone has a whimsical sense of humor at UCDMC. The ER waiting room is painted like a 1980s version of Finding Nemo and there’s a large aquarium at the center of it all. The chairs are a dull bluish-greenish. (It probably would have been better to have black seats–so at least you didn’t suspect what you might be sitting on.) Even though this lovely large fish tank is there for the patrons, ahem, patients of the hospital, no one was looking at it. We were all observing each other. One woman had trouble getting something out of the vending machine and started shaking it. Every head, including mine, turned to watch. Not only did we stare at her, we stared at the baby with a black eye, wondering if the father or mother did it. We stared at the man sitting in his socks whose child was having seizures in the other room.
Pediatric Emergency is even scarier than the main waiting room. You see children who are getting checked after “falling” and children who have other things like blisters or bleeding from an orifice–frightening, really. It occurred to me more often than not that the very parent who brought the child in may have been the parent who caused the harm–if not directly, then by neglect. We were there for a (thankfully) minor eye injury. It gave us the energy to watch others. I found myself hoping that, somehow, all of those ill and injured children could be saved.
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Well, I’m not so sure that all the parents are child abusers. I have two children, and I’ve certainly brought them to the ER, in both cases for breathing difficulties. Where I live, pediatric offices are shutting down and restricting hours — if it’s not during the week and between 9 and 4, you may have no other choice than to go to the ER if you’re worried about your child.
My guess? Abusers avoid bringing their kids to the ER because most states have mandatory reporting requirements, and they don’t want to be discovered. The kids in the ER are the lucky ones — the unlucky ones are hurt and no where near an adult who will bring them to a doctor.
Actually, our doctor suggested we go to the ER as they don’t have the equipment at Urgent Care for eye injuries. I suspect most people are like you and like us, but for some reason the night we were there, there were an eerie number of “falls”. Whether the parent wasn’t looking or the parent whacked the kid–it’s speculation on my part, but neglect is another form of abuse. It’s not always so obvious, however.
I hated seeing small children in neck braces and lying on cots limply–it just chills the heart.