Take a look at medblogger Shadowfax’s take on Glenn Beck’s traumatic hemorrhoid surgery. He’s more of a Media Matters guy than a Beck fan, but schadenfreude aside, he has an interesting take:
I can understand and sympathize with Mr. Beck if there was indeed a delay in getting the catheter in. In our ER those cases usually get brought more or less right back, because retention is so uncomfortable and it’s such a quick fix. He was annoyed with the staff’s apparent lack of empathy. I wonder if his histrionic behavior at triage contributed to the lack of urgency the nursing staff felt in addressing his complaints (in general, the more dramatic the behavior, the less acute the problem). It’s hard to say whether the staff was truly indifferent and callous, or whether Beck’s self-absorbed perspective just made them seem so. Either is perfectly possible, but Beck’s credibility isn’t running real high in this self-aggrandizing narrative.
Some of KevinMD’s commenters thought that it was dumping on the ER that he was sent there for admission. In fact, I disagree. I go nuts with frustration when people show up saying “my husband’s doctor called, they’re expecting him, he needs to have a catheter put in and he needs pain medication right away; he needs to be admitted.” But given that he had urinary retention, the ER was in fact an appropriate place to go, and the evidence would suggest that his doctor did the right thing and admitted him himself. So, not truly a dump.
I’m still amazed that the surgeon admitted him for hemorrhoid pain. I wonder, had he not been a TV personality and VIP, would he have been? In my experience, these cases wind up with the surgeon (or his on-call partner who doesn’t know the patient) not seeing the patient and telling the ER doc over the phone “just send him home.”
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