Labor Day holiday not best spent in emergency room

My wife, Jenny, can tell you that I’m not very fond of hospitals, medical clinics and other places where doctors congregate. She’s practically had to drag me into these places on several occasions, including this past Saturday when a killer headache ruined my first official three-day holiday since 1991.
It’s not that I’ve got a phobia of these places; they just make me uncomfortable.
Visiting my grandfather in a hospital in 1997 after he had heart surgery, I passed out when he showed me x-rays of his heart and told me about the procedure they did on him. Fortunately, a nurse was available to catch me.
I spent 24 hours in a hospital for an overnight trivia contest in Berlin in 2002. One of our team members worked at the hospital and got permission for us to use the computer lab, which had high-speed Internet service. The sterile environment took all the fun out of the contest for us and we never played as a team again. Fortunately, we did take third place that year, which is not a bad way to go out.
Earlier this year I had to go to a clinic in my hometown of Wautoma after a tick bite put a large bullseye on my back. The doctor there googled tick bites and said the tick that bit me is harmless. He never even looked at the bite mark. Fortunately, my wife called the clinic and demanded the doctor to prescribe me something to treat it. I got some antibiotics and it went away.
But Saturday’s visit to an Urgent Care emergency room tops them all for me as bad experience No. 1.
After sleeping all day because the headache was too much to bear awake, Jenny figured I may have had an inner-ear infection and the only way to treat that was to get a prescription for some antibiotics. Since all the clinics were closed already, the only way to get that prescription was to go to Urgent Care.
My headache got worse in the emergency room because a mother kept yelling at her 10-year-old daughter to shut up. The little girl wasn’t bothersome at all, but the shouting mother was. As a father with a 2-year-old that sometimes needs disciplining in public, I always try to make sure it is done so with discretion. This mother obviously never heard of the word.
After meeting with a nurse, who took my blood pressure and asked a few questions, I then met the doctor. He asked a few more questions, checked a few things and then said he was ordering a blood and urine test.
Two hours later he came back in to say they checked out mostly fine and that I probably have some sort of viral infection. He said I should take some Tylenol.
He left and I threw up. He was hardly out the door when I made a beeline to the garbage can. I had just started complaining about the diagnosis when the overwhelming urge to vomit hit me.
Before I threw up I was disappointed he said it wasn’t an inner-ear infection. It would have explained the dizziness and headache. After I threw up, I realized he was probably right. Especially since the headache and dizziness started to slowly disappear afterwards. By morning I was fine.
For me it was just another bad hospital/clinic/places-where-doctors-congregate experience.
The only good such experience for me was the birth of my son. I stayed at the hospital for three days because a blizzard prevented me from going home. It was like staying at four-star hotel because I had Internet access, room service, a cafeteria with food I still crave for and a great view. The only thing it didn’t have was a pool and a bed for me. The chair was very comfortable, though.
There’s an idea. Make hospitals, clinics and other places where doctors congregate more like hotels. Then people like me who are uncomfortable in them would feel like they were on vacation.