Alcoholism, The "Model American Family" and Our American Medical System(?)

Alcoholism, The "Model American Family" and Our American Medical System(?)...

One of us recently had some nightmarish experiences with all three of these phenomena, and all on the same day.

Seems one of our editors has an aging, alcoholic father (his mother, deceased) whom recently attacked him in a drunken, psychotic rage. The psychotic held our editor against his will from one in the morning until 4 in the morning (February 6th), when the editor-victim was able to make his escape. Thinking that he should report to the Emergency Clinic - before the police - he reported there first.

I was thinking about Mary Matalin's recent comments about Mitt Romney's "Model American Family" (see Keith Olbermann's "Worst Person in the World" spot for 2/06/08). It seems that Ms. Matalin's comments don't apply here, either. They strike the bell as rather ironic, dystopic, dysfunctional and just plain wrong.

It's not a model family when you have to escape the captivity of one's religious beliefs held by one's father, or whatever other psychoses he may or may not have...see our example above.

Anyway, our editor reported to the local emergency clinic and checked in with the admitting clerk. Seems like the clerk and the nurse rather felt like sending our editor off in an ambulance rather than examining him in the emergency room! This is one step that was carried out on our confused editor!

Upon arrival at another ER in another town (miles away), he was promptly wheeled into the other ER, hooked up to an additional IV, EKG's, heart monitors, blood test hypodermics, and so on and several of the same questions over and over again. Then, he was x-rayed, checked on again, visited by the doctor and promptly forgotten for several hours. He was left there, completely alone, surrounded by all the accident victims, overdose victims, flu-virus victims and so on and just left hanging there. It was right out of Paddy Chayefsky's The Hospital.That was the next step carried out by our American Medical System on our hapless editor.

He was left there so long, he removed all of his bandages from the tests, the syringes and one IV to no complaints nor protests from the medical staff! The next staff member to show up promptly took another blood sample after our man had been there several hours. Oblivious to our editor's condition, he had to ask for a bottle for which to urinate. We suppose he was never offered a drink of water either, due to his 0.9% saline solution IV. Step 3!

By the time the doctor returned, he apologized for the delay like some McDonald's employee apologizing because your Big Mac was 5 seconds late (!). He then gave our editor the results - all positive and suggested that he had nothing more than "chest wall pain". In which case, stress was most likely the cause. But, he wanted to hold our editor over for the night for a stress test the next day. At which point he handed our editor the now useless heart monitor and the now empty saline bag for him to hold. Noting the casualness with which the empty saline bag had been left plugged into our editor's arm and the doctor's mishandling of the same, he opted out of the inpatient stress test and decided to approach it as an outpatient. (Note: some nurse finally poked her head in the curtains and asked, "IV?". To which our editor pointed, and she gently removed from his arm). This took at least two more hours! It was as if the entire hospital staff (at this point he even had the social worker involved!) was holding him against his will, much like his raging, drunken father. Step 4!

Step 5...never happened. The editor left the hospital campus still with the annoying "chest wall pain", which had never been treated, medicated, fixed nor given a prescription, either!

Our editor eventually escaped both the confinement placed on him by his father and the American Medical System, but not from his "Model American Family". More about his father, later.