Reality Check

Climbed mon., wed. and thurs. Thought mon. would be good, but i wasn't healed. Wed. was interesting. Sent a couple of 4s--one of 'em flashed. Then i talked with a guy for a long time about his marriage. That's a guy that could use some help. His wife and he are separated, but still married--neither of 'em wants a divorce--but she's dating another guy. And they have a two year old. Kindof a messed up couple o' people, and i don't get the impression they're very happy with it. Pray for them, would you.

went back yesterday for a 30min. session. Thought i'd just get some blood moving and kinda warm up. Did a long traverse on polished wooden holds; bunch of slopers and pinches. By the end of that i had this mega-pump i couldn't shake off, and my hands waxed arthritic. So i thought i'd try one of the 4s i'd done the day before. That didn't go so well. So i thought i'd jump on a 5 project. Needless to say, a sucking vortex opened in the continuum, and things took a steep downward spin. Fortunately, i had to go to micro lab, and i left.

Then i was leaving class and i called my mother in law. She said the kids and she had just been in a wreck. Annie got banged up a bit, and we ended up taking her to the er and sitting for 3 or 4 hours. Finally we left because they were only gonna do a c-spine and jaw x-ray, and there were maybe 8 or ten people in the er, and they appeared to have no motivation to do anything to anyone at all. i'm sure there was a constant stream of gurneys lined up for x-rays. Actually, i think the triage creature needed a chain-smoking break, figured there was probably no internal bleeding, and said Mehh, let 'em sit there till they give up and leave, and we'll have more time to eat donuts. Anyhow, seeing as she spent nearly a whole minute triaging her, and her blood pressure was just fine (whew!), and i didn't take her in for a flippin' x-ray to begin with, and there was approximately zero chance that she had anything that'd show up on an x-ray, and it wouldn't have been till around next mon. before a radiologist would've bothered looking at it anyhow, and they almost certainly would've been happy to let us sit in the waiting room until then, and there was no hope of getting a CT (which is what i went in for, since her head was killing her and i was afraid she'd banged it badly) we left. As far as i can tell, that's the way to run an er most efficiently and cost effectively: make a pt. wait until they figure out for themselves that there couldn't actually be anything seriously wrong or else they'd already be dead, at which point they decide to leave. i guess it limits liability.

But seeing as it probably would've cost an insurance company $8,000 to do a CT (that this hospital wouldn't use again for the remainder of the year), i guess head trauma in an mva is a poor justifier. It starts to feel like a Monty Python sketch after a while.