I'm going to put everything under the cut because of mentions of gross bodily functions.
So, my first ER experience happened in January. I started off the new year with weird back pain. But I just figured I hurt my back at work. And then I woke up one more and my urine was orange. Two days later I was itchy all over my body. I mean, even in between my toes were itchy. And the weird back pain kept coming and going. I woke up one morning to get ready for work (after not sleeping at all due to the uncontrollable itching) and I was just drinking some water when suddenly I get heart burn. And as I'm heading out the door to go to work I threw up. I wound up calling in sick 10 minutes before my shift started because I had no idea what was going on.
Later that night the back pain came back and it was so bad I couldn't sit or lay down. And as soon as the pain went away I had to go throw up.
The next day I was just sitting around in the middle of the afternoon and the pain hit again. After 5 hours of the worst pain of my life I decide to go to the ER because this combined with the itching, heart burn, and puking there has to be something really wrong. And I didn't have insurance at the time so I was risking debt I'd never be able to pay back to get some relief.
So I get to the ER and get into a room. I did a urine sample and the doctor came in and was like, "I think you have kidney stones. We are going to run some more tests.
The doctor comes back and tells me it's nothing more than a sprained back and my urine is because I'm dehydrated and he tried to tell me I took one of those pills you take for a UTI that turns your urine orange (yeah, that's how dark my urine was), and my itching was an allergic reaction to something.
When I went to my follow up appointment at a doctor (it took almost 2 weeks to get seen but luckily my dad's doctor fit me in) he looks at the results from the ER and right there on his paperwork it says Gallstones. And he has no idea where they got the sprained back thing from. He went on to explain that the itching and orange urine were signs of jaundice.
He scheduled me for another appointment because we couldn't do many tests since I didn't have insurance. At this point I was working on it. I got no help through Obamacare but I was waiting for the state to decide if I qualified for insurance. He told me if I had another gallstone attack to either call him and if his office was closed get myself to the ER. And this doctor was awesome enough to not charge me at all and told me I never have to worry about paying for a bill if I needed to see him.
Cut to last month. I had just gotten my insurance and was waiting to go back to the doctor I had a really bad attack. I was trying to wait until the doctors office opened but around 5am after being in the worst pain in my life for 9 hours I told my mom I had to go to the ER. I couldn't take the pain and this was the 3rd attack and the pain wasn't going away. The second attack lasted about 2 hours. The first one was about 5 hours.
So we get to the ER and at this point my urine is turning orange again and the itching is starting up. The ER nurse asks my symptoms and I tell her and I tell her I think it's because of the gallstones. She tells me that is impossible because I don't have abdominal pain. She asks when my last period was and I tell her. She tells me that my period is late and I must be pregnant (spoiler alert: it wasn't late I still had 2 weeks to go before I got it again so no idea what her issue was). I tell her no, there is no way I'm pregnant and my period isn't late. So she starts telling me that they can refuse to treat me for lying and refusing to take a pregnancy test. So I tell her that I would be more than happy to take the test because I know I'm not pregnant.
She puts me in a room and about 5 minutes later the doctor comes in and the first thing out of his mouth is, "What is the problem? Let's make this quick because I have real sick people to deal with."
Now, there was no one else in the ER all the nurses were standing at the nurses station and when the nurse was picking a room to put me in I saw her computer screen. All the rooms were empty. The waiting room was empty too.
So I start explaining and he interrupts me to tell me he can't do anything for me and I'm wasting his time. At this point I'm in tears because it's approaching 10 hours of pain and I've been up for almost 24 hours now. He tells me he's sending in someone to take my insurance information and I can go.
And then as he's walking out of the room he offers me a shot for the pain. So I replied, "No. I don't want one. I don't want to waste anymore of your time." And he walked out.
Was I in the wrong for going to the ER that second time? My doctor when he found out what happened was pissed. And he's on the board of directors for the hospital.
TL:DR: ER tells me I have a sprained back when I have gallstones. Second ER trip results in doctor yelling at me for wasting his time and then did nothing to help me.
I'm slightly worried because I'm having surgery on the 20th to remove my gallbladder and the surgery is going to be done at this hospital. My surgeon is awesome but I'm terrified of being treated like crap again. And it's even worse because my surgeon said usually gallbladder surgery is a same day type deal but he keeps his patients in the hospital over night.
So now I'm kind of nervous about having to spend the night there and I'm worried about how well I'm going to get treated. And I have anxiety so if someone treats me crappy I'll probably just have a panic attack and break down crying.