Health Care

I watched The Waiting Room, a documentary that covers 24 hours at an emergency room in a public hospital that cares for patients who are typically uninsured. (It’s available on NetFlix.)

Regardless of what your preferred answer is to the health care problem, this documentary compellingly depicts that there is a problem. At least it was compelling for me.

I liked these people. The patients, the families, the doctors, the nurses, the administrators, the social worker. Even the unseen pastor. Here are some quotes from the film:

• Nurse to worried dad, “I’m not going to stand here and talk about it like that over a little head.”
• Stroke victim on falling repeatedly every day, “Sometimes make me laugh.”
• Doctor on stroke victim, “I was kind of hoping he couldn’t walk” in order to keep him in the hospital.
• Patient, “I’m one of those people whose house is worth far less than I owe on it.”
• Nurse, “He’s here just to get some Tylenol. He’s been waiting 7 hours.”
• Little girl on why she was breathing strangely, “Trying to take the pain.”
• Patient, “God, take this anger away from me.  Please.”
• Dad to kids, “This is what happens when you guys get the car, and I get no car.”
• Drug addict in response to what he had been doing the night before, “I wasn’t doing right.”
• Doctor to patient, “Good luck now.”  Patient, “I need it.  If there is such a thing as luck.”
• Nurse to patient who had been swearing, “I know you was raised better than that. People ain’t going to do what you say especially in the manner you try to make them do it.  You get a grip.  Are you a Scorpio?”
• Doctor trying to find an available bed, “Oh, this guy can go.  I just need to scan his aorta real quick.”
• Doctor to patient, “If we take that out, you would eventually die.”  Patient, “Well so fucking what? If I gotta go through this shit every time I fucking come here.  I’m sick and tired of it.”
• Staff on gun shot victim (another problem that needs a solution), “Do we got an age on this kid?” “Fifteen.”
• Advice to doctor on what to say to parents, “He died. These are precise, unequivocal terms. Died or dead.  Not went to a better place or expired or some other strange stuff like that.  Okay?  Dead.”

The quotes don’t convey the raw emotions the way the facial expressions and the body language of the people in the film do.  The pain, the anger, the frustration, the weariness, and the fear.

And the occasional smiles show there are a lot of strong people outside of Boston as well.