Introduction
Today’s topic: what’s it like to visit an urgent care clinic
right now, during the pandemic? What are things like at a hospital? And what’s
it like to get a Covid-19 test? Unfortunately, I’m now in a position to report
on all three.
I’m unable to type right now so I did something different: I
recorded a vlog without having a script, and then transcribed the audio track using
my phone. Please excuse whatever transcription errors I missed here.
Here’s the vlog version if you prefer that:
And now, with no further ado, the Q&A.
Why would anybody want to
go near a hospital right now?
In my case, I had a pretty bad accident. I put off treatment for
a couple days until it became clear that I needed it. Before I started making
appointments I asked a buddy of mine who’s an MD, “Is this a really bad time to
go to the hospital?” (Obviously he does this every day for work, and then goes
home to his family.) He said, “You know, hospitals are really well-run: they’re
kept very clean and they have protocols in place. It’s probably safer than a
grocery store.” I agreed, and my wife made me an appointment at an urgent care
clinic in Oakland.
Is it hard to get an
appointment?
Of course this depends where you are, but in the Bay Area the
hospitals etc. are really not doing much, as so many people avoiding these
places. Getting an appointment was really easy.
Is the traffic lighter
getting there, and is the parking easy?
Yes! Our drive to Oakland was done in record time. I don’t know
about parking because my wife dropped me off—they aren’t letting visitors inside,
you have to leave your patients at the curb. When we went to San Francisco for
the second appointment (more on this later) it was even weirder because the Bay
Bridge, which is normally, any time of the day, totally clogged up, was just
smooth sailing. It’s kind of weird to see a city like San Francisco completely
empty. I mean, normally there are horns honking, cars everywhere, people
flagging taxis … in a more suburban area like Albany, where I live, it’s not that different from normal—you get more people walking but that’s
about it. To see a major city seemingly abandoned like that is pretty eerie.
Is there a rigorous Covid-19
screening protocol before I can enter the building?
The first place I went to, I was able to go through the lobby
and up the elevator on my own though they had a big thing of hand sanitizer as
soon as you hit the lobby. At the entrance to the clinic on the second floor
there was a guy with a table and he took my temperature and made me use hand
sanitizer so he could make sure I’d done it, and he made sure I wasn’t
obviously symptomatic before allowing me to proceed.
Will the person doing the
screening make corny jokes to try to put me at ease?
Well, that’s going to vary but in my case the guy did. After
taking my temperature he said, “Okay, 97.3 on your FM dial!” I wonder if he
makes that joke with everyone. Actually though, it was pretty useful because if
he said something like, “The New Alt: 105.3” or “107.7: The Bone” then I’d know
I had a high fever, probably had Covid-19, and would be sent packing.
Do I bring my own mask or
will they provide them?
I had heard they were going to give me my own mask but it’s kind
of a Catch-22: until they hand you a mask you have to be wearing one. But after
it’s been in the hospital I don’t really want the mask anymore, so I wore my
skuzziest, dirtiest mask. At the urgent care Center in Oakland the guy had me
switch it out and got me one of those cool rectangular blue ones that hooks
behind your ears. I kind of wish I’d kept it but I pitched it with my old one.
At the second place, the hospital, they were offering masks but I totally
forgot to switch, so again I was wearing like my skuzziest mask, the one I’d
dropped in the dirt, and wore it the whole time so I must have looked like some
sort of derelict.
What social distancing
measures will the doctors and nurses take? What kind of PPE?
Most of the time there was only one person in the room with me.
Briefly there were two nurses in there but that was all right. The risk of
infection, as I read recently here, depends on three things: your proximity; whether indoors or outdoors; and,
how much time you’re in that proximity. If you’re closer than 6 feet from
somebody, outside, on a trail, for like one second, you’re not going to give
that guy Covid. So when I pass someone ten feet away on some trail and I’m not
wearing a mask, and he looks over and scowls like I just sacked his ancestral village,
I get a little testy. Two nurses in the room with me for two minutes at the
same time, everybody wearing a mask … I’m not worried about it.
As far as PPE, the doctor wore a Plexiglas face shield, kind of
like what a what a riot cop would wear but not quite as burley. It reminded me
of the sneeze guard on a salad bar. So between that, and surgical gloves, and a
mask, the doctor was well protected.
It’s actually kind of funny because my hand is pretty bandaged
up and the doctor needed to check out my wounds, so she was trying to take
Band-Aids off while wearing rubber gloves and she just couldn’t get anywhere. I
was like here, let me help you out. How often do you get to help a doctor like
that?
What’s the closest you
had to get to anybody?
Obviously the doctor was right in there, dabbing with this very
cool goop called MediHoney, which has some kind enzymes in it that kind of eat
up the bacteria that might be growing the cuts. Kind of like putting maggots in
your wound except smaller. So she was kind of close, but I not for very long. The
most uncomfortable part was when I went across the hall to radiology. The X-ray
tech had to position me with the backdrop and everything, and I say
uncomfortable not because I thought he was going to give me Covid-19 but because
he was asking me to put my bad arm over my head and all these other horrible
things. That took a while too, but it was a giant room and he’d frequently scurry
behind the control console to not get radiated, obviously.
How come every single
member of the medical profession (except for the doctors) has tattoos now?
I don’t know why, but they all did, like, to a person, and one
of the nurses had like this really cool tat on her forearm that looked like a
face but it was like really well done. It was kind of distracting because I
kind of wanted to say, “Wait, can you hold still for a moment, because I want
to peer into the eyes of this person staring out from your arm.” But of course
I didn’t want to waste her time or anything. Maybe this is just a value-add,
you know … giving you something interesting to look at during your treatment.
Do you feel like you’re
taking medical resources away from Covid-19 patients or people injured during
protests?
Short answer: no. Again, there’s nobody in there, no one is
scheduling elective surgeries right now. It’s just starting to get a little
closer to normal but there were more staff than patients by a huge ratio. It
was totally dead in there, just going through the empty hallways, like a ghost
town. It’s almost like when you’re trying to support your small business so
they don’t go under ... I’m giving this hospital some business. (Not that I
would have chosen to, honestly.)
Do you think it’s in good
taste to use terms like “dead” and “ghost town” under the circumstances?
Aw, lighten up!
Is the service really
quick now, since you’re practically the only patient in there?
Oddly, no. I thought this X-ray thing was going to be pretty
quick but I was there for hours. It was like usual: you’re seen by the nurses,
then they leave, then the doctor comes in, leaves, comes back, then they’re
ready for you down at X-ray, then you wait for those results to get sent to the
doctor, then the shift changes and whatever and you get a new doctor, so I was
sitting around for quite a while. I’m not sure why that is … maybe they’d sent
too many of their staff home.
Do they still give you a
ridiculous orders like taking your shirt off well in advance of the doctor
showing up so you have to sit there in an over-air-conditioned room for like 45
minutes shivering with no shirt on for no good reason?
Yes.
Is there any consequence
whatsoever in completely ignoring the instruction to remove your shirt well in
advance of the doctor actually showing up?
None whatsoever … I sat there with my shirt on. I’d planned
ahead and wore a shirt with snaps down the front so when the doctor showed up,
I popped down all the snaps in a row and whipped the shirt off in a jiffy. It’s
important for patients to advocate for themselves.
Did everybody you talked
to in both medical facilities ask you if you smoke or if you have ever smoked?
Answer is yes: all of them did. I got this question constantly,
just as I did last time I was in the hospital for a broken femur.
Why do they ask this?
I’m glad you asked because I’ve posed this question too. The
answer is, smokers just don’t heal very well from this kind of thing. Smoking
doesn’t just wreck your lungs and your respiratory system—it stresses your
entire body and puts it on the back foot no matter what it’s trying to recover
from. So don’t smoke!
Is it hard to schedule a surgery right now?
Hopefully you’ve never had to schedule a surgery but normally it’s
a bit of a hassle, this little dance you do over several phone calls with the
surgery scheduler whose full-time job is figuring out this puzzle with
surgeon’s time so tight. But this was a piece of cake. The orthopedist recommended
surgery, I agreed (I’m not going to second-guess the person who went to medical
school) and he’s like, all right well, how about Tuesday?
Do they make you get a Covid-19
test before you can have an operation?
Yes, they actually will operate on you in a part of the
hospital where there’s nobody with Covid-19, to limit any chance of exposure. So
you have to get a test.
Is it hard to get an
appointment for a Covid-19 test for an upcoming surgery?
Nope! Again, a piece of cake. They put in the order on Thursday
and I got an appointment for Friday. So if you’re looking to get a Covid-19
test and you’re not getting any luck, just go get in a bad accident and injure
yourself, and Bob’s your uncle!
Do you have to go to the
same tent where all the symptomatic people are to get your test?
That’s a great question, because obviously you don’t want to be
exposing yourself to the virus. Fortunately, they have a whole tent setup for
asymptomatic people, which is pretty cool of them.
Do they really have a
drive-thru Covid-19 test, and will they really serve you microbrews on tap
there?
Two-part answer: yes, they really do have a drive-thru Covid-19
test, but no, they don’t serve microbrews on tap, at least not here. Maybe in
Texas they’re doing that, or maybe in Oregon, but not in California.
That question about
microbrews ... is that kind of a sore subject?
Yeah, it actually is and I wish you wouldn’t bring it up. Right
now, in the days before the surgery, I can’t have Advil (as it thins the blood)
so I have to take Tylenol, and I can’t have any alcohol with that because I care
about my liver. So even though a lot of people are advising me to treat my
symptoms with beer, I can’t, and I had to I had to give up a 32-ounce growler
of Fieldwork IPA because it was going to go bad in my fridge. So that hurt, I
think that hurt even more than my injury.
Don’t worry, the beer found a good home. The pal I gave it to
later Beck’sted it from his patio.
Do they allow you to
bring a pet in your car for the drive-thru Covid-19 test?
This is actually on my paperwork for the test: they
specifically forbid you to bring a pet. If you have a pet in your car, they
will turn you away, which kind of makes sense, right? Because if Rover is in
the in the car with you and someone takes like this q-tip that’s like a foot
long and sticks it so far up your nose you’re reminded of a sword swallower, Rover’s
probably going to take action. Rover’s like, “Okay, that person’s killing my
master—this is my finest hour, I’m going to save the day!”
Did you want to bring your pet to the Covid-19 test?
I have a cat. Needless to say a cat has never protected its
owner so there’s no risk there. I probably could have filed the paperwork to
have the cat registered as an emotional support animal, but only if they never
met this cat. She’s useless. I’ve been laid up since Saturday and this cat will not get on
my lap, will not even come around. It’s like I’m damaged goods, the cat is
avoiding me like the plague. So no, I was not even tempted to bring her, not
even to punish her, because she can’t change her stripes.
What was it like getting
the Covid-19 test?
I was in the backseat of the car (I can’t drive right now) and
somehow I’d been led to believe the person was going to get into the car but I
think I must have been a little bit of a little bit confused. Instead the tester
had me roll down the window and then she leaned in and first swabbed all over
my mouth so needless to say I was not wearing a mask for this but obviously the
tester was wearing a face mask, shield, the whole thing. Then she said, “I’m
going to go up your nose.” And she sticks this thing up in there, gets it like
an inch up my left nostril, and she’s like, “That one’s a little tight, I’m
going to go through the other nostril.” I’m thinking great, what if this other
one’s tight too … then what?
But the other nostril was apparently okay so she said, “This is
going to last for 10 seconds,” and I’m really glad she gave me the countdown
because it was weird, I mean it was like way in there, and I don’t know if you’ve
ever had this happen where you’re eating pasta or rice so fast that you get a
piece that goes way up in there so it’s stuck like halfway between your nose
and your mouth and it just sits in there and kind of hurts, like when you hit a
raw nerve with a drill when having a cavity filled without Novocain (which is
how you should do it because it doesn’t hurt that bad) so it’s annoying and you’re
thinking like “Oh god, I got pasta up my nose!” and then you get a Kleenex and
you just blow your nose like super hard and then you feel the noodle bit flying
out of your nose, when you look down you’re like, “There it is!” and it is just
such a relief. So if you’ve ever had
that happen, that’s kind of like what it’s like getting this Covid-19 test. They
put the swab so far in there and kind
of wiggle around and I’m kind of going “Uuuugh! uuuugh!” (but silently) and she’s
counting, “All right, I got 5 more seconds” so I’m thinking “I can handle this!”
and then it’s over. So, all told, we got there and sat around for a couple
minutes while they did whatever and then from the time like the swab came out
till I was done was like two minutes and then we hit the road.
How quickly did you get
back the test results?
It was about 15 hours—pretty quick! They called me the next
morning and let me know.
Do you have Covid-19?
No, I don’t. At least, I’ve tested negative.
Did they give you the
antibody test so you can see if you’ve ever had Covid-19?
I asked about this and they said the antibody test gives so
many false negatives (or was it false positives?), its accuracy rate is about
50%, so it’s just completely useless and they wouldn’t bother getting me that
one.
If you test positive for Covid-19
do they still go ahead with the surgery?
I thought the answer to this would be no, they’d have to reschedule,
but actually, given the severity of my injury, and since it’s not considered
elective, they would move forward with the surgery even if I have Covid-19. They
just would send me to a different facility where they have a “negative pressure”
operating room where they can basically make it safer. I was kind of surprised
about this and asked my doctor friend, who said, “Yeah, they should just
operate, like why should they be so worried? They’ve got their PPE and this is
the environment they work in; what’s the big deal?” I was kind of surprised … I
was thinking it would be the patient at risk in that case. But I guess if you’re
not showing any symptoms, it’s full steam ahead.
Would now be a good time
to finally get a surgery for that chronic dandruff?
You know, as disgusting as my dandruff is—and it’s really bad, I’ll
admit, it’s just a disgrace—I think I’ll wait until the pandemic is over before
I go in for that scalp transplant.
More reading on the pandemic
- Shelter-in-Place FAQ
- E-Book Options During COVID-19 Lockdown
- Is Cycling Safe During the COVID-19 Pandemic?
- The Toilet Paper Hoarding Conundrum
- More COVID Chronicles – Baking in Place
- When Will the Pandemic End?
- How to Talk to Your Cat About COVID-19
- Teleworking During the COVID-19 Pandemic
- Why Don’t The Dutch Wear COVID Masks?
- Travel Tips During the COVID-19 Pandemic
- COVID Wristbands
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