The following will likely come off as a rant (this is me, after all), but it’s needed so that I can give some helpful, possibly life-saving advice in case you or a loved one is ever faced with a similar predicament. It’s also a cathartic exercise for me.

Emergency Rooms are where sick people go to sit and wait. Many of the doctors, nurses and staff who work at them are truly wonderful, caring people. But many others are not. Many are people who were born to hold jobs that do not require contact of any kind with other human beings, but have instead chosen a vocation that requires them to help and comfort other individuals who are scared, hurting and tired. And even if an ER is filled with good employees, it might be too small to address patients in a timely manner. Either way, the end result is the same: ER is the place sick people go to sit and wait.

My dad checked into the ER at 9:30 on a Thursday evening with severe pain in his side. He could barely move, and he suspected it was his appendix. At 5:00 the following morning, the ER finally calls him back to run tests. But they do not runs tests for appendicitis; instead, they run other tests first. When those checked out, they finally check for appendicitis. This was 8:00 that morning. At 10:00, they realize that, yes, it is his appendix. So they schedule him for surgery – a 2:00 pm surgery, four hours later.

Between the time they ran tests at 8:00 in the morning and performed his surgery at 2:00 in the afternoon, my dad’s appendix burst. He was waiting, in the hospital, when his appendix burst.

It took the ER 7.5 hours from the time my dad checked in before they admitted him. It took them 10.5 hours from the time he checked in before running tests for his appendix, the area he told them had been hurting. It took them 16.5 hours from the time he checked in with possible appendicitis before they performed the surgery to remove it.

Even though my dad checked himself into the ER approximately 13 hours before his appendix burst, it still burst. And the difference between having your appendix removed before it bursts and having it removed after is the difference between staying one day in the hospital and one week – if you’re lucky.

Here is a fact that would have saved my dad a lot of grief, and could save you or a loved one grief (or worse) in the future:

If my dad had called 911 and had an ambulance bring him into the ER instead of driving himself, he would have immediately been checked in and had tests run on him. There would have been no 7.5 hours of waiting. His tests would have been run immediately, and his appendix would have been removed before it burst. How do I know? I know because I’ve witnessed my brother call 911 for the exact same thing, and he didn’t have to endure even one minute in the ER waiting room. He also didn’t have to endure having his appendix burst.

“You shouldn’t call 911 except for ‘real’ emergencies,” you say?

What is a “real” emergency? Most rational people are not going to visit the ER for just anything. The notion that you have to be shot or experiencing a heart attack or stroke to be worthy of an ambulance is nonsense. I don’t buy it for a second.

If it’s an emergency – be it appendicitis so bad you can’t move, your child having fallen and hit her head, or your pacemaker going off in the middle of the night while you were sleeping – it warrants a 911 call. That doesn’t mean you have to call 911, but it means it’s worthy of a 911 call if you choose to make it. The ambulance’s relatively small financial cost will be more than worth it if it prevents you from enduring an extended stay at the hospital as a result of not having your condition treated in time.

Thank you to everyone who has commented the past few days and kept my dad in their prayers. He’s getting better each day, and we’re hopeful he’ll get to go home Thursday, 9/27.