Being admitted to ED has me showered with joy

THOUGH they offer the best care, there are times when a drive to a far away hospital is in order.

QUICK VISIT: Andrew Gale recently took a trip to emergency at Warwick Hospital and while he wasn't surprised by the high level of care, he was by the prospect of having a good catch-up with friends. Picture: Contributed

I HAD an unexpected visit to the hospital emergency room a couple of weeks ago.

I'd gone home from work not feeling so good and just started feeling worse.

The good bride and I decided it was probably worth a trip to the hospital so off we went.

When we got there and told them my symptoms things certainly intensified in a hurry.

Doctors and nurses came running from everywhere.

There were buzzers and flashing lights.

Pretty soon I was wired up to things, injected with medication and then thankfully, feeling normal again.

Thanks guys! I owe you another one!

I've said it often and written about it before.

If a trip to emergency is needed, I have every confidence in the staff at our local Warwick Hospital to give the type of care that is needed.

When the proverbial hits the fan, take me, or my loved ones there any day (just not every day, please). Even with seven children, a couple of years between trips is enough.

After a while I noticed other voices around me.

Familiar ones. Voices of friends and neighbours and so on.

Coming from the other sides of the curtains that surrounded my little cubicle.

I quickly gathered that the people attached to the familiar voices were also, likewise confined in their own little cubicles after suffering some sort of malaise themselves.

Later, when all was quiet, I spoke up to the person next to me. Let's call her "Sharlene".

"Hey neighbour," I said.

She laughed in reply. Then I heard another voice from the other side say "Bloody hell Gale, I thought it was you".

It was another mate, let's just call him "Keith".

The conversations went on for some time. About why we were all there and some regular stuff, same as you would if you met in the street.

After a while "Sharlene" and "Keith" were moved on and I was left there to stare at the ceiling.

I began to think about how great it was that not only did I get such excellent care for my little "turn", in our small town hospital, but we could also catch up with people we knew while we were there.

Then my thoughts took a "darker" turn. Hey I'm a writer! I'm always looking outside the box.

What if you had to go to the hospital after some sort of embarrassing incident?

You know, one of those things that you can read about in the quirky news section of the paper, or some off-beat news pages of the internet.

I'm trying to keep this as G-rated as possible.

But as an example of the type of thing I mean, If you are a fan of Seinfeld, you may remember an episode that featured "Fusilli Jerry".

A small statue of Jerry made of pasta gets left in the shower and then gets stuck somewhere bad (in a character) when they slip on the soap and fall. An embarrassing trip to the hospital follows.

Hey, at least they were in New York where the millions of people make you pretty anonymous.

If that happened to me, here, I think I'd just have to endure a long and painful trip to Brisbane, the Gold Coast or Cairns even. Just to keep the "incident" quiet.

Hey it's not the hospital staff I'm worried about. They're professional.

But Keith and Sharlene are bigger gossips than me.

And that's saying something!