ER Go Bag

[Keith&Co.]

When my wife was pregnant, we listed the things we'd put in a ready bag for her trip to the hospital. A book or two, a roll of quarters for vending machines, current list of meds...

And then for all three kids, she went into labor three yo four months early. Never packed a bag, not once.

Last weekend, had a pain in my gut, bad enough to decide to go into the ER. But before leaving, i chose to print my latest list of meds since there are about 12 items on the list and they get cranky every time i want to revisit the list. "Oh, and..."
"Did i mention ...?"
"Oh, wait, they stopped one of them. Was it...?"
"Do you count supplemental iron? Cause my insurance doesn't..."

0003 in the morning, the printer decides it only speaks, i dunno, Portuguese or something. Then, JUST as we say, fuck it, i touch the door knob and out comes a sheet... of blank paper.

So, i decided (after the abortive trip to the ER parking lot), to just go ahead and make a ready bag for the inevitable next trip.

Got an Army Surplus medic bag.
After a few trips, my packing plan assumes a two hour wait in the lobby, 8 hours in the exam room, and eventual incarceration, probably on the sometimes-pediatric floor, where characters from The Little Mermaid watch me pee, then eventually clean clothes for going home.

So, list of meds, clean underwear and socks, granola bars, a paperback that is not a medical thriller, clean t-shirt, USB charger, and a squirt gun in case my roommate is an asshole, again.

My wife thinks i might rethink the squirt gun... i ask if she remembers "Terry," who played his TV, on Volume 10 out of 10, from 0500 to midnight. What i want is a goddamned baseball bat, but it's only a 9 inch bag... now she admires my restraint.

But she doesn't want one for her bag....

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Probably should upgrade to a USB hub charger, in the case people come to watch the fireworks with a potential roommate.

 

[Toni]

Stretchy pants that can easily go over incisions and/or casts. Slippers/loose shoes that don't require tying and that you can just slide your feet into, even if your feet are a bit swollen or wrapped in bandages.

Maybe a zippered sweatshirt, in case you get chilly. Probably won't but just in case.

I also cannot stress this enough: multiple copies--photo copies are ok--both sides--of any/all CURRENT medical insurance cards.

Your phone to call the number on the back of the insurance card to get authorization for anything that is not immediately life threatening. The insurance company will have a more stringent definition of life threatening than you will.

Hopefully nobody will need them but......

 

[braces_for_impact]

You could compromise on the bat thing and use one of those novelty-size bats they give away at baseball stadiums. I think that would give a satisfactory thud and be more gratifying than water squirting.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Make life a little easier:

Put these records on your computer. Install Dropbox. Install Dropbox on your phone. That way you don't have to worry about printing them in an emergency.

The same pair of directories also has scans of our IDs, our passports, our passport cards (yeah, it's very unlikely we will need those scans, but memory is cheap), our medical powers of attorney and her naturalization certificate.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Make life a little easier:

Put these records on your computer. Install Dropbox. Install Dropbox on your phone.

Wicked smart. But i don't have a phone. The charger is for my wife, if she attends...and my MP3 player.

I do have a wristband thats got a thumbdrive with a pdf on it, but the incredibly foresightful people who programmed it gave me only room for four medications....

 

[Toni]

Make life a little easier:

Put these records on your computer. Install Dropbox. Install Dropbox on your phone.

Wicked smart. But i don't have a phone. The charger is for my wife, if she attends...and my MP3 player.

I do have a wristband thats got a thumbdrive with a pdf on it, but the incredibly foresightful people who programmed it gave me only room for four medications....

You might consider adding a phone for yourself. If you feel the need to have an ER go bag, it seems as though a cell phone would be prudent.

Or maybe not. My parents died within a few weeks of each other, after long illnesses. During the last 6 months or so, I just kept a go bag packed so that if I got a call in the middle of the night, I could just go. Kept it in the back of my car. Then I kept it in the back of my car Incase of severe weather that might strand me at work over night. Used it once, too.

 

[Keith&Co.]

No need for my own fone.

The only time i ever go to the ER is after i stop arguing with my wife. ("I tell you, I'm FINE.") So there's no one to call, she's right there, taking the nurse's side in any discussion about when i SHOULD have come in...

And backseat-driving my answers.
"When did you first notice the problem."
"Oh, an hour ago."
"He means Tuesday!"

Come to think of it, i might not WANT to call her, not until they have a diagnosis...

 

[fast]

I once watched an episode of Columbo where the question was posed as the best place to keep an umbrella: the home, the office, or the car. Something like that. The answer given was the home. I never really liked that answer. I felt the car.

Still, like that question, it seems good to ask in this case. Where shall you let it reside? My first thought, again, was car. Well, if it were me. But then again, years later, I might go with home. But still, why not ask.

So, whatcha think? Home, vehicle, other

 

[Toni]

No need for my own fone.

The only time i ever go to the ER is after i stop arguing with my wife. ("I tell you, I'm FINE.") So there's no one to call, she's right there, taking the nurse's side in any discussion about when i SHOULD have come in...

And backseat-driving my answers.
"When did you first notice the problem."
"Oh, an hour ago."
"He means Tuesday!"

Come to think of it, i might not WANT to call her, not until they have a diagnosis...

So, you need to listen to your wife and avoid the ER by going to a regular clinic or urgent care BEFORE it gets to ER status.

Also, you need the phone. It's pretty cheap to add one to the plan. You don't have to use it or give anyone your number. My husband didn't want one right up until the time he got stranded in a blizzard a few miles from town. Fortunately there are a lot of nice people in the world and one gave him a lift to the nearest gas station which had a tow truck and everything worked out and he didn't die of hypothermia.

Blizzard cleared up and we found ourselves magically in the phone store, adding him to my plan--the plan he insisted on because I have a long commute and blizzard season is potentially about 6 months long...

Be smarter than my husband and get yourself a phone.

 

[bilby]

I once watched an episode of Columbo where the question was posed as the best place to keep an umbrella: the home, the office, or the car. Something like that. The answer given was the home. I never really liked that answer. I felt the car.

Still, like that question, it seems good to ask in this case. Where shall you let it reside? My first thought, again, was car. Well, if it were me. But then again, years later, I might go with home. But still, why not ask.

So, whatcha think? Home, vehicle, other

There are a few ways to calculate the best option. Ultimately, the goal is to maximize the number of departures from a dry location during rain at which an umbrella is available, and/or to minimize the distance and time traveled as a pedestrian exposed to rain, without an umbrella available.

If your car is parked in a location where it is accessible during rain without getting wet, both at home and at work, then the car is clearly the best place for an umbrella - assuming that most of your departures from a dry location during unexpected precipitation are either from home or from work, which is a fair assumption for many people, then an umbrella in your car will be available on all of those occasions.

If your access to your car during rain requires you to be exposed to that rain, then the car may no longer be the best choice; The home has more departure events than the workplace; And while the car may have more departure events than either home or work, these tend to be closely coupled in time - if it isn't raining when you leave the house to go to your car, then it probably still isn't raining a short time later, when you leave your car to go to work. In that case, the home is the best place to store your umbrella - because some of the departures from home are for destinations other than work, but few departures from work are for destinations other than home.

Of course, all of the above assumes a roughly random distribution of the onset time of rain in a given day. That assumption may not hold - and the distribution of the onset time of rain over a 24 hour period in fact varies by both location and season. In some places, such as Florida during the summer, it is FAR more likely to start raining between 3pm and 5pm than during any other two hour period (source), and in such a case, keeping an umbrella at work is likely to be far better than keeping one at home, assuming that you typically leave work sometime in the late afternoon or the evening (obviously if you work a night-shift, the opposite could be true). At the same time of year in the Mid-west, rain is more likely to commence in the early morning; So people in the Mid-west are well advised to keep their umbrellas at home during the summer time.

So there's clearly no universally correct solution; The best option is to monitor the timing of the onset of rain in your area over at least a decade, and to use that data to determine the optimum location for storing your umbrella, (weighted by the availability of undercover accessible parking at both home and work). OR, if you want to make things a touch easier, just get three umbrellas, and keep one in each place. They are not expensive these days, and that way you won't spend a decade getting rained on while you over-think the problem and collect the data.

 

[Wiploc]

Originally Posted by fast I once watched an episode of Columbo where the question was posed as the best place to keep an umbrella: the home, the office, or the car. Something like that. The answer given was the home. I never really liked that answer. I felt the car.

Still, like that question, it seems good to ask in this case. Where shall you let it reside? My first thought, again, was car. Well, if it were me. But then again, years later, I might go with home. But still, why not ask.

So, whatcha think? Home, vehicle, other

Ah, I figured it out: You have a garage. You don't need the umbrella to get to your car.

 

[Keith&Co.]

So, whatcha think? Home, vehicle, other

My Darth Vader lightsaber umbrella is in the car. My Science Fiction Museum umbrella is in my desk. Two plain old boring umbrellas are in the garage. People keep giving me umbrellas.
And snow shovels. Weird.

The bag will be inside the house. It's not something I absolutely need to have to hand as much as some things I would like to have at the ER, make things a little easier. So if for some strange reason I'm not at home before she finally talks me into self-admitting, wife or kid will be able to find the stuff to bring to me.

 

[fast]

Pronouns. Grrr.

By "it", (from 'where shall you let it reside'), I meant the ER bag, not the umbrella. My oops.

And "so whatcha think" was short for "so whatcha think (about where the ER bag should be housed." My bad.

 

[Emily Lake]

But before leaving, i chose to print my latest list of meds since there are about 12 items on the list and they get cranky every time i want to revisit the list. "Oh, and..."
"Did i mention ...?"
"Oh, wait, they stopped one of them. Was it...?"
"Do you count supplemental iron? Cause my insurance doesn't..."

0003 in the morning, the printer decides it only speaks, i dunno, Portuguese or something. Then, JUST as we say, fuck it, i touch the door knob and out comes a sheet... of blank paper.

There's an app for that. Actually, there are several.

What i want is a goddamned baseball bat, but it's only a 9 inch bag...

Tactical Baton

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

A long hospital stay taught me some things. Hospital breakfasts tend to offer oatmeal. Make sure you take a bottle of cinnamon. That oatmeal needs it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Also, you need the phone. It's pretty cheap to add one to the plan. You don't have to use it or give anyone your number. My husband didn't want one right up until the time he got stranded in a blizzard a few miles from town. Fortunately there are a lot of nice people in the world and one gave him a lift to the nearest gas station which had a tow truck and everything worked out and he didn't die of hypothermia.

Blizzard cleared up and we found ourselves magically in the phone store, adding him to my plan--the plan he insisted on because I have a long commute and blizzard season is potentially about 6 months long...

Be smarter than my husband and get yourself a phone.

For an emergency-use-only phone look at FreedomPop. How does $0/month sound?

 

[Keith&Co.]

There's an app for that. Actually, there are several.

What i want is a goddamned baseball bat, but it's only a 9 inch bag...

Tactical Baton

xcept i don't habitually carry anything yyhat runs an app.

But the baton has appeal...

 

[Keith&Co.]

For an emergency-use-only phone look at FreedomPop. How does $0/month sound?

thats fine. Except i don't want a phone, and it's never been an issue of money.

Had one for a while, decided it wasn't something i needed.

 

[Keith&Co.]

A long hospital stay taught me some things. Hospital breakfasts tend to offer oatmeal. Make sure you take a bottle of cinnamon. That oatmeal needs it.

Heh. Everyone in this house hates eggs except me. So one upside of incarceration is the ability to order eggs every goddamned day without hearing complaints of how the smell, sight, thought of eating them stirs fantasies of murder and/or suicide, or placating unsavory threats from whoever has to clean a gram of yoke off of my plate...