Re: Swine flu victim asked to leave ER dies next day Originally Posted by qhjumper 
I just think that even if this person wasor wasn't a regular in the ED someone should have noticed his condition. I think it's very sad. Since when does lying down in the ED get you kicked out?
It is a sad comment on the staffing, orientation, and adequacy of facilities in American EDs. Obviously the guard hadn't been sufficiently oriented to his job, and didn't realize that what he did was to essentially discharge a patient from the ED without written medical pemission. If he was new, the nursing staff probably didn't anticipate that he'd do that, and had no time to discern his adequacy to do his job. Whenever new security staff came to the ER (many decades ago) when I worked there, they buddied him/her with an experienced guard. Typical of the priorities now encountered in hospitals, the new guy (please tell me he was new, and had not been there for 5+ years), he may have been duly told only to check in at certain time clocks throughout his shift, and he didn't want to trip over a patient on his way to one.
The fact remains that his life was nearing its end, and no appropriate disposition had happened. We've read here of many people who languished a few days to weeks in a hospital bed with H1N1, even were on ECMO, and died anyway - it just took longer.
I can see what the another poster meant when he/she wrote that mobility doesn't predict viability, with this bug. I'm on my 4th day with it, on Tamiflu and miserable, but longed for a mocha at midday today, called to ask for it to be ready when I drove up, as I didn't want to contaminate anyone at the coffee store, put money on an outdoor table (after utilizing waterless hand sanitizer), then called a take out restaurant up the hill from there, ordered soup and did the same procedure getting it. The coffee store's employee had flu s/s fot one day, she said, and stoically went to work, to keep her job. I counselled her about staying home with it, getting treatment pronto, and told her about possible consequences, if she happened to be pregnant. I wasn't a very credible health care teacher......
I was crippled by the time I got home, climbed the 2 flights to my bedroom and collapsed on my bed for 4 hours. The soup was good, then, but my appetite decreased.
Tomorrow I'll call the doc for antibiotics...... (a care plan!) for the lava-like flow up from my bronchi and out of my sinuses, of greener stuff. He deals with far more compromised people than I am - he's an oncologist. I see him for recurrent anemia, but won't cross his threshold with this. If only Costco delivered prescriptions.......
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