If you watched ER last night, you may have noticed that the writers (who must have been reading my weblog!) completely ripped off my appendix surgery story on their show last night. Unfortunately, they changed just enough details to avoid having to pay me royalties. Here are their mistakes:
1) In Real Life, I’m not a middle-aged black guy.
2) I never ate any hospital food on my first trip to the ER, because I was doubled-over and completely nauseous. On the show, the guy with appendicitis scarfed down a tray of hospital food, which by the way, since when do they feed people in the ER? In Real Life, if you had shown me any food, especially hospital food, I would have puked on you, except that I couldn’t because I had puked up everything the day before.
3) When I initially went into the ER, my symptoms were much clearer and my pain was evident. The mis-diagnosis happened because the doctor thought my pain was the result of gallstones, even though my gall bladder is under my ribcage, and the pain was by my hipbone, where the appendix is located. I tried to point out to her that she was ultra-sounding the wrong place, but she didn’t listen. And they had totally doped me up on morphine, so I was inclined to be passive, rather than the insistent pain in the ass that I normally am. On the show, however, the guy’s symptoms were ambiguous, which is why they decided to send him home without a CT scan.
4) My appendix ruptured at home, rather than in the ER waiting room. On the show, the guy comes back and his appendix ruptures in the waiting room, and he pukes on the doctors shoes, which I didn’t do, but I sure wish I had, because, poetic justice. In Real Life, my appendix ruptured at home while I was waiting to get another ultrasound for my mythical gall stones.
5) On the show, the guy didn’t almost die, because he was in the ER waiting room, rather than at home because of mythical gall stones.
6) I didn’t go into surgery right away, because they were afraid that would be worse, so I sat in the hospital for a week until I was no longer septic, then several weeks later I had laser surgery.
Moral of the story: A) Television shows are total rip-off artists. B) A lot more people read my weblog than you think. C) If you want me to stop being an insistent pain-in-the-ass, morphine will really work.