Please Don’t Avoid the Emergency Room
Health care workers across the country have been asking: Where are our regular patients?
Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, heart attacks, strokes, and even appendicitis continue to plague thousands of Americans. For many of these, minutes can mean the difference between life and death. Still, as people continue to practice social distancing and hear stories of overwhelmed emergency rooms, many are hesitant to go to the ER despite warning signs.
Jordan Delgadillo of Peoria, Illinois is one of these patients. In March, he was up all night with severe stomach pain. “It felt like knives in my side,” he says. Delgadillo told himself, “It’s gonna go away, it’s gonna pass.” It didn’t. He laid in bed for days until he couldn’t endure the pain any longer. He sought advice from an online forum, hoping someone would “give [him] an excuse not to” go to the hospital.
“Seeing the news constantly, seeing how bad the hospitals have been getting — in my mind, if you’re in the ER, you’re going to catch the coronavirus,” he explained. “That was my biggest fear.” When a flood of commenters told him to go to the hospital immediately, he broke down and cried because he was “so scared” — not of his illness, but of the hospital.
