TLDR; Went to the hospital yesterday for 10 hours because none of the doctors offices would help me with my high blood pressure, just to give me pills that somewhere else could have done and still have to wait a month to see a family doctor about it.




So, that was the last thing I wanted to happen, especially with all the covid crap going on. However, with how this country is and how fucked up the the medical system is, I apparently had to jump through this hoop.

Going back a little bit, two Mondays ago I went to an Urgent Care. I had hurt my back at work and their new system is to just send you somewhere if you hurt yourself. This was the first time I had been to a doctor in about 10 years, so I was anxious to say the least. Well, turns out they wouldn't do anything for my back because my blood pressure was too high. It also didn't help anything that one of the managers gave me a bunch of crap and yelled at me before heading there. So at that point I just went back to work, let them know what happened, found out I wouldn't get compensated for checking things out for my blood pressure and just went home early.

Called my caseworker Monday of this week and told him I needed to see someone else for my back. So yesterday I went somewhere else and ended up getting the same result. The doctor actually talked to me a bit more, but again refused to do anything and said I just needed to go to the hospital as well. They at least gave me another option and said I could go to a family doctor down the road and get checked out.

Well, once again they refused to do any blood work or do anything for me at all. So that's money out of my pocket because again with how this whole system is set up in this country is so damn screwed up.

At which point I just bit the bullet and went to the hospital. I hated knowing that more than likely Kep was going to have to walk home from work and the little one was going to be stuck in his crate for much longer than he was supposed to be.

And so starts me staying at the hospital for a whole 10 hours for something that probably could have been solved in an hour or two. Got there, did my vitals, told them what I was there for. Not long after that I went into a side room to give them all of my base info. Maybe an hour or two after that they did an EKG, which I've already had done two other times and was told it was perfectly fine, and they took some blood finally. After that it was another 6 hours sitting in the damn chairs of the waiting room for them to do something. I kept hearing people saying one thing or another about what all was going on. Supposedly they've been super busy like this for the past 4 days and they were at capacity for people in rooms there. Which is fine, I understand. I know things are crazy at places like that right now, but I figured that at least with how bad things were for me that I would have been seen a lot quicker. And the handful of people I kinda sorta had interactions with there were surprised as well that I wasn't taken back sooner. Hell the woman that was across from me for a while was there for maybe half the time I was and she kept thinking she had a heart attack or something, but seen shortly after me and still left before me.

But after about 8 hours they finally put me through to the next area, which was spent once again sitting in a chair. It was at least slightly more comfortable and I was able to try and rest my eyes for a bit while I was waiting on things. They took my blood pressure two more times and it was at least slowly going down at that point. They also did two more blood tests on me as well. Which was still interesting either way, since I've never had that done before.

Once that was all said and done and when I was finally able to be let go nothing was any clearer than before. Which is how I figured it was going to go, but again with how screwed up this country is on things, it's what apparently had to be done. All the blood work came back fine. Nothing gave them any kind of red flags to explain things. I wasn't really having any kind of symptoms as well from everything. So, the only thing that came from it was they at least started me on a small dose of blood pressure medication. Since they didn't want to throw too much at me right away. I picked up the rest of the prescription today and have at least 90 days worth of that.

The other end of things, and where it gets even more screwed up, is that I had already made an appointment at a family doctor in the area to try and get looked at on the 20th of May. So because I did that the ED couldn't just get me in to another place earlier associated with the hospital. So I was supposed to, and did, call the place today, tell them the ED wanted me to be seen within a week or two and not a month out and told them everything that was going on. I got a, "oh well there's no other appointments any sooner since you're a new patient here. So we'll let you know if anything opens up sooner, but you'll just have to wait until then either way."

So yeah, even with jumping through their damn hoops I still have to wait to get things taken care of. Which I really shouldn't be surprised about either way. But it is what it is. I just need to try and take it as easy as possible at this point and keep taking these meds that they gave me and hopefully they will help me enough here until I can get something that'll work for me a bit better.