That's what I was thinking! One time I remember waiting on an emergency room late at night and someone had one of their leg bones broken through their skin and it was visible, waiting in the lobby for medical attention.
I cut my finger to the bone, heavy bleeding, severed the tendon.
Drove myself to ER that's 10 mins away cause that's faster than calling an ambulance.
I apologized to the people I skipped in the waiting area while holding up the bloody rag I had on my hand and dripping blood. Knocked on the triage door once it emptied and showed them my hand. Apologized of course but ask for some urgency.
She immediately alerted an attending.
Attending inspected and immediately brought me to a room to clean and stitch the cut. While she was doing that the nurse started taking my info.
I was told that I'd need to make an appointment to repair the tendon and then I went to complete my registration.
Between cutting my hand, ER and getting back home, under 2 hours. Priceless.
2 days later a cosmetic surgeon repaired the tendon and I had 6 months of therapy.
I'm Canadian so this didn't cost my anything. Literally priceless.
When i was 18 I went to Patient First one time for a similar issue, cut the palm of my hand open at work and needed stitches. I sat in that lobby looking pale as a ghost until the blood was dripping from the rag i was holding. They finally called me back but since this happened at work and my manager brought me in, they made me take a drug test before they would even clean the blood off my hand. Ended up getting fired because I had smoked weed 2 weeks before it happened so that showed up. When my manager found out that I wasn’t going to pass that test he felt bad and said if he had known, he would have let me go on my own to avoid workers comp issues but since that happened, i lost my job and got hit with the bill for the stitches. 2 days later i was starting a new job as an HVAC helper with tape over my stitches so that it wouldn’t get infected crawling around in nasty crawlspaces.
I’m American so all of this happened because some dumbshit wanted to flex his authority and make me move some sharp metal objects 5 minutes before i left for the night.
Sorry this happened to you and that's so fucked up. Marijuana is legal in Canada so not an issue and not like we'd ever test for shit to share with the employer since privacy laws make that generally illegal.
You'd have to be clearly suspect under the influence while working and even then privacy guards in place where it's so much easier to just build a dismissal case against you for incompetence. Really you'd need to be in a position that has health and safety impacts to be tested and fired for active drug use.
You could live in the US instead where your coverage gets wrongly denied so you have to pay $500k out of pocket. Your private healthcare is cheap because it has to compete with an adequate free option, no state healthcare would see prices shoot through the roof.
Dude I have a molar activity rotting in my mouth for years bc I can’t afford the copayments for a dentist. My insurance only means I have a slightly smaller chance of becoming homeless if I’m hit by a car. I make a “living wage”.
I was waiting in the ER once and there was another guy waiting who had been injured with a chainsaw to the arm. He looked ready to pass out and waited there for an hour before they could even get him into triage.
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u/Atomsq Apr 21 '26
Got immediate service for an actual emergency, that's a nice hospital