Beck From the Dead: A Review of Glenn Beck's Deathbed Video
I watched the video of Glenn Beck, rambling clearly under the influence of some sort of narcotic pain medication. In the video he indemnifies the entire medical system because he feels that he didn't get the care he deserved, fingering himself and the CEO of GE as prominent local VIPs. He compares the unbearable hospital experiences with his slightly less horrific, back alley, miscreant-style Glenn Beck days. Maybe when he was an unnamed, unimportant "schlub", like he refers to all of us other lowly peons. "One of the darker experiences of my life", he said twice, comparing his experience to the horror movie, "saw". Looking at the video clinically, it appears that he possibly had a mild psychotic break while on the medications, hallucinating and becoming suicidal. Regardless of whatever actually happened, his reaction was certainly not normal.
The video continues, his histrionically derailed trains of thought wander around, lacking any type insight or trace of intelligent analysis, never saying what was so horrific about the hospital stay. Was it the wait time to be seen? Did he feel that he should have had his pain relieved more quickly? Did he have to sit for a few minutes in a dirty waiting room with other sneezing, oozing, bleeding, moaning patients? Was it a busy ER, where he was triaged appropriately and seen as soon as the busy staff could, while they were concurrently coding an elderly cancer patient, getting report on the next ambulance coming in, trying to arrange an emergency cardiac catheterization for a heart attack victim, paging three admitting docs at the same time, all while calling the floor supervisor to stop stalling on admitting the 1 ICU, 2 telemetry, and 2 more med-surg patients that we've been boarding overnight so we can put 4 more of the 15 other sick people in the waiting room in beds to be seen?
Maybe he simply has no perspective and should discuss some of the real problems with our health system. Like how insurance companies deny patients the care that they need so they don't lose profit margins. Or how a growing number of American citizens commit healthcare fraud, lying and faking to feed their prescription narcotic addiction, or driving gas-guzzling Hummers and Expeditions while raking up thousands of dollars in U.S. taxpayer funded healthcare bills per year. Or how the processed, industrially made, pesticide-laden foods that we feed ourselves directly contributes to obesity, diabetes, cardiac disease, and other illnesses, with many dyes, preservatives, or other ingredients causing medically significant side effects, including cancer, birth defects, miscarraiges, and others, even contributing to childhood ADD. Or how frivolous lawsuits cost millions of taxpayer dollars per year, drive good physicians out of business, causing healthcare shortages, and further drive the price of basic medical care through the roof.
I'm sure you had some discomfort, but suck it up, man! I really don't understand how this issue became "Glenn Beck has a Harrowing Medical Experience: U.S. Healthcare in Shambles" story, as opposed to, "Glenn Beat has Transient Psychotic Break While in Hospital: Narcotic side effects and How Prescription Narcotic Abuse is On The Rise."
posted by Clint Slaughter, M.D. at 11:59 PM
1 Comments:
Thank goodness!!! I work in an ER, I feel bad that people have to wait but unfortunately that is how it goes sometime. Someone who is having chest pain, dizzy, vomitting and sweating is going to, indeed, get seen much faster than someone who is experiencing "minor" back pain. It is just the way that it is.
Our ER, however, has standing orders for certain things, including pain control. However, the patient must still be brought in to an ER bed. No person is going to give a minor or major pain medication without being brought into the ER to be monitored and what have you. I am not certain that all ERs practice this, and perhaps they don't but perhaps hospitals can look into this because like I said, in our ER, a person can be given certain medications before they are actually seen by an ER physican. And so far, this has helped ease the patients.
I do not shed tears for Beck or many other patients who THINK that they should be treated in 5 seconds. Life doesn't work that way and it probably never will.
Oh and by the way, in my book a CEO is no more important to me than someone's grandmother. We, generally, treat people the same way regardless of their "position" in society.
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