Triage trauma...

At around 12:30am today, my gallbladder decided to tell me something was wrong. It was very vocal.

It kind of triggered a series of events inside me that I'm not going to get into. What's important to know is that it was the worst pain I'd ever suffered. Even worse than when I scraped off half of my face in a bicycling accident as a kid.

By the time I'd vacated my stomach several times I'd realized the pain was only getting worse, so I went to the hospital.

I was too busy trying to get help to see the sign telling me that the average wait would be six hours.

In my severely pained state I lurched around the waiting room. Not knowing what was wrong with me I would sit and groan, clutching my guts. I've never experienced pain like that and no one was helping me.

A triage nurse let me have my own room to lie down in the dark and I would listen to the nurses joke and discuss daily events while I sat there, lay there or staggered around the room in a delerious state.

By my vague calculations, it was seven hours before I saw a doctor who gave me morphine which lasted a good 30 minutes before the groaning started back up again.

SEVEN HOURS of passing out from pain only to wake up realizing that it was ME making those horrible noises while triage nurses shot the shit by the water cooler.

It was about another seven hours until I got out of there, feeling somewhat better, but still very sore. And that was after the nurse admitted she forgot about me and the doctor telling me he was wondering where I was.

14 hours total. Seven of which I was in agony.

I guess people don't really know how bad our health care is until they experience the worst of it.