Living Life In A Wheelchair

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Had My Right Leg Vascular System Assessed At My Local Hospital Emergency Department
[ Tuesday July 30th 2024 at 5:07 am ]

I just finished at the hospital. I went there because an area of the skin about the size of a grapefruit directly above my right hip's femoral artery went cold this yesterday afternoon for about 2 hours. I needed to be assessed if this was a life threatening event.

The wait time went from 5 hours to 10 hours while I was there. I was categorized as one level less than imminent death. The wait time increasing while I was there means an average of 12 new patients an hour were arriving for medical treatment. There were non stop ambulances bringing people to the hospital while I was waiting. I have only ever seen it this intense one time previously. During my wait I wrote 13 blog entries and spent some time playing Minecraft. I am happy about the progress I made on my blog.

The hospital emergency department doctor was able to rule out everything that is life threatening. There are essentially 2 possibilities that the doctor could think of that caused this:

  • The first is temporarily pinching of the femoral artery.
  • The second is temporary localized blood supply being cut off because of the violent throbbing my damn right hip was doing while this occurred.

Since this is so much out of the ordinary I said to the doctor: Since this isn't life threatening let's just leave this here and let the surgeon use his skills to make a probable cause and further recommendations. The emergency department doctor was pleased with my proposal.

I asked the emergency department doctor 2 additional questions to help me:

  • I showed him my left groin. I exampled my hips have both swelled and the skin hasn't got the normal air circulation resulting in the skin breakdown I was showing him. I have a yeast infection. He gave me a prescription to treat it.
  • After using the emergency department toilet I saw in the mirror one of my moles has changed color. I asked if he would look at this. The mole is loosing it's blood supply. This isn't a concern. Then he explained if it becomes painful or changes shape I should come back.

The emergency department doctor thanked me four separate times:

  • For being easy to work with
  • For being understanding about the long wait time
  • For being cheerful
  • For being patient with the doctor

It was clearly the right decision to go to the emergency department of my local hospital.