'WHY?' 3-8-2020

 

The Trauma, The Terror and The Feelings After The Emergency Room

I am still traumatized still after those frightful experiences as a patient in the Emergency Room at Mount Auburn Hospital.

I am absolutely terrified to enter Mount Auburn Hospital’s Emergency Department again.

I don’t understand why the events of Saturday, 3-3-2023 happened but, with surety, believe it should have never happened to me or to anyone.

I had waited in the Emergency Department for hours and was the last person to leave the lobby for help, leaving the lobby completely empty!

I did not see a triage nurse. None of my vitals were ever taken by hospital personnel in the hours I had been in that lobby.

An EMT did come out to the lobby with a thermometer to take my temperature.

After being the last one to receive care and the Emergency Room lobby now empty, except for me, I was then led into a room inside the inner Emergency Room.

Why my assigned nurse, and all the medical professionals involved that night in the Emergency Department, steal my dignity and humanity by their total lack of basic, safe, humane and compassionate care, I cannot even fathom.

I was in this hospital gurney with both rails securely up, hooked up to my needed oxygen, an IV inserted with fluids coming out of the IV and other medical paraphernalia to me.

The nurse knowingly left me impenetrable in that gurney without any access to relieve my bladder and without any way to safely get myself out of this gurney to go to a bathroom.

I am mobility impaired and need a walker/wheelchair + I require supplemental oxygen 24/7/.

My assigned nurse, knowing that I am mobility impaired full knowing I need oxygen and was recently discharged from Mount Auburn Hospital because of a fall, this nurse, and every staff member involved, knew  with hours passing I would need to relieve my bladder.

Despite the many, many times I pressed the unanswered call button and the several times I called the Emergency Department Reception Desk on my cell phone,  I received no help, no one.

I was told, by the person who took my EKG that they were prioritizing patients and other patients were sicker than I was and needed care more than I did.

I had to relieve my bladder after at least 2 hours of being ignored, ridiculed and talked to in a manner of which my health concerns didn’t matter.

After hours had passed, I called again and again and several more times, needing to go to the bathroom.

I was ignored and even told that my nurse was coming. She never came, never!

I had to relieve my bladder and had no choice but to go in the sheet on the gurney.

I lay in my own urine on that wet sheet and on this hospital gurney for what seemed like forever!

My dignity had been stolen away by heartless medical professionals who knew better than to take the unjust actions they had chosen to.

The Emergency Room staff’s actions towards me were hurtful, painful, damaging and unjust.

I realize that the Emergency Room was busy, but being busy no longer became an excuse for the harmful, hurtful and cruel treatment I was exposed to and was forced to endure.

I sit here, in the safety of my apt, traumatized, not being able to get the sleep my body and mind desperately need and in terror of going back to that Emergency Room again!

I have to tell those who chose not to give me the basic, humane care that fixing the problems they had caused by their neglectful actions and attitudes is by any and all means as easy as changing a wet sheet on a hospital gurney and giving me 2 washcloth to wash up with!

The wet gurney sheet was finally changed and I was given a few washcloths to wash myself up just before I left the hospital Emergency Department.

Unfortunately, I have heard these unhelpful and hurtful actions happen to others, especially the elderly and people who live with disabilities, people whose voices are rarely heard and/or not taken seriously.

What I suffered at the hands of people, medical professionals who were supposed to help me, not only hurt me but, should have never happened to me or to anyone!

I still quiver as I, too often, remember the events of that recent time in the Emergency Room at Mount Auburn Hospital.

I have been diagnosed with life threatening medical health problems and I live with severe debilitating chronic physical pain. I

What erupts in me is an extreme and dangerous fear of being in the walls of Mount Auburn Hospital Emergency Department again, ever!

Questions I do have to ask those involved hospital personnel are:

“Why did you intentionally cause pain, terror in me and steal my sacred dignity that I have always held tight to in the process?”

“Why did you intentionally cause me more pain than I had already was in?”

“Why did you traumatize me further when I came, just asking for help?”

“Why?”

Evelyn Pinto

March 5, 2023