Current Release: September 11th, 2007 | Vol. XXIV Iss. 10

Photo by Ben Giles

Urgent Care is here to help, eventually...

By Ben Giles

When I was a kid, I hated going to the doctor, mainly because I was scared to death of needles. The mere mention of shots would get me all wound up. My parents would have to drag me kicking and screaming into the rooms in the back and hold me down. Promises of ice cream, a new toy, or never having to eat vegetables again did nothing to calm my fears. Threats didn’t work either. To me, there was no greater punishment than some smiling quack sticking sharp objects into my arm.

Nowadays, I still hate going to the doctors’, just for different reasons. I got over my fear of needles a long time ago.

Now, I hate the waiting. I hate the sketchy nurses who don’t seem to have a clue what they’re doing. And I hate wondering whether or not the doctor is wrong.

All that seemed to happen on one particular afternoon over at Urgent Care on Kempsville Road. Remember, Urgent Care is the first place where the school sends its sick or injured students.

Now, I had done something to my ankle, and even though I had no idea what, I did know that it had swelled up to the size of a softball on both sides and I couldn’t walk on it. So it was off to Urgent Care, where after waiting in the lobby for over an hour, I finally got called back. Without even talking to a doctor, the nurses sent me straight over to get an x-ray, where once again, I waited. Another half hour or so.

Finally having gotten my x-rays, I actually got to see a doctor. Upon glancing at the x-rays, he declared nothing was broken and told me to wear some blue boot around for a while. I left having talked to a doctor a grand total of maybe three minutes, and felt , justifiably, a little uneasy.

A week later, my ankle hadn’t improved at all. I decided it was time for a second opinion, so I went to Atlantic Orthopedic. They asked me to bring my x-rays from Urgent Care.

After looking at the same x-rays that Urgent Care doctors used to declare me fine, this new doctor was able to point out to me two different places where I had fractured my ankle, and even tested my ankle to discover I had a serious high ankle sprain.

I was furious. How could any real doctor miss something like that? After that, I never wanted to go back. I talked to other students with Urgent Care horror stories. About being sent off with some pills after hardly speaking to a doctor. About spending nearly four hours waiting to be seen. This was ridiculous. I wanted nothing to do with that place ever again.

So I talked to Marie Curiton, the head nurse on campus. I told her what had happened. How badly I had been treated. How the doctor seemed to know less about what was going on than I did. She told me she had frequent contact with Urgent Care and would immediately find out what went wrong. She also asked for my doctor’s name so she could specifically mention his misdoings.

After that, I had a chance to calm down and think things over, and then had a second meeting with Marie, where I gained a bit more understanding of the situation. As it turned out, the doctor I had seen was just a fill-in for the night, and though he probably wasn’t the best person to see me, he was the best at the time. And not seeing the fractures on the x-ray was a mistake that happens surprisingly often.

I’ve come to learn that doctors are people too. They’re people in intimidating white coats, but people none-the-less, people who make mistakes just like us. I also learned that though Urgent Care may be the bane of many students’ existence, it’s still a great place to go if you’re sick and at school. No appointments are necessary. Urgent Care takes the overflow from every other doctor in town, and does the best they can to serve people on a walk-in basis. In fact, I was even reminded of my first experience with Urgent Care. Different doctor, less serious injury, but even so, everyone was helpful, thoughtful, and eager to answer my questions.

Basically, you have to wait at any doctor, appointment or not. You just have to be patient. Sometimes, one doctor doesn’t know as much about something as another specialist might, and do only what they can.

But when I think back on my latest run in with Urgent Care, I’ll remember that the doctor had the good sense to get x-rays done, put me in a boot, and tell me to keep off my feet. He did the best he could. And it’s unfair of me to ask for anything more from him than that.