Last night I had to take Margaret (my wife) to the ER. She was complaining of stomach cramps. The pain was just unbearable. So at 1:45am, we headed to the ER. The great thing about where we live is that it is 1/2 a mile from the hospital.
The story outline should go something like this:
Introduction: A typical Friday. Wine after work then dinner at a local Thai Place.
Jump into chronological order of events, starting with the time. Example
2:08AM: Checked into the ER. Got my special visitor badge that opens the castle gates. Not a lot of people around. The staff looks bored. I don’t blame them.
8:30AM: Ready to get discharged. The last item is the standard temperature, blood pressure and oxygen content. The machine in the room does not work. The nurse starting randomly pushing buttons to make it work. No working out well so far. He leaves and gets another machine. That one boots up fine. All of the vitals look good and he writes the results ON HIS HAND. So much for high tech medical records. We all have to make due I guess.
Along with the chronological order, do some call outs like:
Fun Fact: Did you know that an MRI machine was actually called a Nuclear MRI but ever since 3 mile island, they dropped the nuclear.
Tip: Jokes at 3:00am in the ER are not as funny as you might think.
Stage 1: Settled in
Stage 2: Medicated
Stage 3: Bored and Cranky
At the end, there will be an afterword that says something like:
Afterword
This story took place in March 2009. At the time, the US unemployment rate was 8.5%, 10M people did not have health care and the world was reeling from a deep recession.
The afterword will have the facts and the call to action or why don’t we solve health care.
