The Surreal Law School Life

I went to the Hospital last Friday....Emergency room. I had been sick (cold/flu) for two weeks and was getting steadily worse. I was not an emergency situation mind you, but I was pretty ill. After waiting four hours in the "waiting room" I was ushered into a small cramped, sterile examination room where I waited a further hour for the doctor to arrive. Now, believe me I understand how emergency works and there were people a lot sicker then me, but the doctor asked me 0 questions, read the triage sheet, ordered an x-ray (in case a had pneumonia) and then disappeared. Total time I saw the doctor: 30 seconds. After the x-ray, which took another hour because I was basically wandering around the hospital by myself in a hospital gown and a surgical mask, the doctor poked his head in the door, said the x-ray was normal and disappeared. Well, I continued to get sicker and finally went back today. I was immediately seen, hooked up to a ventilator to breath a steroid to open my chest, rushed to x-ray, and sent on my way with about $200 worth of anti-inflammatories and anti-biotics. This doctor made the comment that you shouldn't go to emergency unless you have an open chest wound that someone (probably an underpaid nurse) can stitch up. Let's face it, what exactly can a modern doctor do, outside of surgery. I mean, what diseases can be actually cured or even properly diagnosed by modern medicine. Short of a bacterial infection, and open wounds doctors are little better then they were 300 years ago. Which doctor made the right diagnosis? I'll probably never know, as I will get better each day because of my own immune system. All this talk about avian-flu is a joke, because the truth is, modern medicine doesn't have a clue how to stop or even control a viral contagion. In other words, if you get sick, and something can't either be lopped off or treated with penicillin....kiss your ass good bye. I mean if it weren't for the zillions of dollars collected each year by big pharmaceutical companies for paxil and zoloft, not to mention heart burn medication and cholesterol lowering drugs, doctors wouldn't even be able to make a living. The irony is that three biggest selling and most often prescribed pharmaceuticals (ie. anti-depressants, heart burn and cholesterol drugs) basically treat nothing more then the effects of a shitty diet, drug use and binge drinking. Next time some med student gives you attitude because he thinks he is better then you....Kick him in the groin and remind him that less then fifty years ago these esoteric idiots were recommending smoking to help with breathing problems.