Ho Ho Hoe!

Its been six days since Santacon in San Francisco and I am no less a Ms Claus today than that time.

Eggnog?

County Hospital

Our county continues to astonish me. Yay! This could be because it is now 2:28 am and I have been at County USC hospital since 10:30 am, when I joined Monk whom I had dropped off at ER around 7am. Yup I have been sittin in this waiting room for 16 hours. You see, Monk visited a Hollywood Clinic last night for a EKG in order to have his heart assessed for his meds. Upon the print out the nurse says ‘Oh, you have to go to emergency, you have a abnormal heart’. If the thought of someone telling you that you have an irregular heart rate doesn’t scare the hell out of you, imagine they tell you this and you live in one of the most populated cities on the planet and you don’t have health care; behold…County Hospital.

I think about how great it is that we even have access to a county hospital as so many people living on this planet have no hospital access whatsoever, so before I begin my bitch session don’t think I haven’t thought about that. However, this is America right?, the ‘world power’ the industrialized nation and Los Angeles is one of the richest places on the planet, so come on is health care too much to ask for. Yes, yes it is.

Maybe you have heard the horror stories about County USC hospital or ‘County’ as it’s called. From the outside the almost century old building stands proud with plush gardens and a newly built wing for psychiatric and ER patients. However, once inside the grim truth greets you as people lay bellowing in pain sitting in chairs stacked high to the ceiling. Monk sat in the emergency from 7am until 10:33 pm when they finally called him, almost 16 hours. Now its almost 3am and I, having just asked if he will be admitted, has been informed the doctor hasn’t seen him yet, so the nurse can neither confirm nor deny his admittance. I have had four large cups of coffee, downloaded tetris on my phone for $6.95, played free slots on my laptop, read Scientologist literature, smoked a pack of cigarettes while reading free literature on how to quit, and fed several outdoor pigeons.

I also watched a lady, escorted by her husband, throw up blood all over the entrance to ER. No one cleaned it up and if you go out to the walk way you can still see it. She was issued a gurney at the door on which she laid in the corner of the ER waiting room for 45 minutes throwing up blood until someone took her into the back. There was a man sitting next to Monk and I who was throwing up lime green vomit, he too was hunched over in pain. He was admitted 7 hours after arriving. GREEN VOMIT! At 10:45pm a man came in who had been shot in the upper arm. He had a towel over the wound. It took him 45 minutes to be admitted.

As I sit here in this shiny new waiting room there hangs a banner over my head, ‘Surrounding you with innovation: New Hospital, New Technology, New Network. A Tradition of Excellence’. I am sitting here fantasizing about the banner falling from the cathedral style ceiling on to someone’s head in the waiting room only to see how long it will take for this ‘tradition of excellence’ to begin. The truth is our health care system, or lack there of, is no laughing manner. There are families surrounding me with parents hugging their little ones in blankets, signing songs in Spanish to them as they rock back and forth with worried expressions on their faces. There are husbands who lay in the laps of their wives who look helpless and frightened like the little boys they once were. All eyes face the door. It sort of reminds me of playing Keno. Everyone here is focused, waiting for their number to be called. However there is no numerical pattern. Because no one here has health insurance everyone is seen by how critical their injuries are. Therefore you have about seventy people who have been waiting most of the day and night for things like the flu, cold, or cough. When the emergency door opens we all hold our breath as we pray the next person who joins us won’t be worse off. If the next one in the boat is a heart attack, stroke, or poison victim that pushes everyone back an hour, at least.

Here you also see people for who they are. Several people speak under their breath about all the Latinos getting medical attention who are here without documentation while those hard working Americans struggle. I was outside smoking when a white man from Kern County said this to me as we smoked. I said, actually we don’t give undocumented immigrants Medi-Cal, however he didn’t believe me. Then there are the negative views of the homeless. A sigh from the older gentleman next to me when a homeless man entered the room, usually escorted by the paramedic that brought them in, lets me know it’s just another undeserving person seeking services. There are several mentally ill homeless people here. They talk to themselves, are extremely unkept, and odorous- much the way a homeless person who sleeps on the streets would be. This place is a monster. When the big one hits please make sure you have your health insurance card on you and if you happen to get injured during the quake and you don’t have insurance I wish you a quick and painless death for this place will.

Monk and I finally head for home at 5:45am with a big yellow moon hanging on the horizon. We talk about all those who are still waiting. I do not doubt that the people who work there are doing the best they can, but how good is that when there are too many people in need of services and not enough service to offer them.