Covid care in America on a Friday night.

My art can be found on Instagram @klonskyart.

Friday night I had chest pains that sent me to Northwestern Memorial.

NWM emergency room on a Friday night with a Covid uptick is a sight to behold.

TV news doesn’t begin to show the reality of urgent healthcare in America for the poor and indigent.

Amazing staff.

Cops and their prisoners, drug overdoses, victims of car crashes and Covid doesn’t even triage a possible heart attack to the front of the line.

Lots of hours waiting.

Don’t talk to me about what’s wrong with national healthcare. This is what doesn’t work.

Before the trauma center at U of Chicago Hospital they tell me it was busier.

Thanks to the activists who fought for that trauma center.

THEY were relentless.

By Saturday noon I had a stress test and echocardiogram and blood drawn for the possibility of a lung blood clot.

Saturday night I got an actual hospital room which are hard to come by.

Update Sunday. Still at NWM. But no testing for me today. They’re not doing any more heart tests having pretty much ruled that out as the pain source.

Focusing on lung blood clot from covid, which is a definite thing we are learning, even with “mild Covid” which Anne and I had two weeks ago.

V/Q scan tomorrow, which although not as definitive as a regular CT scan, is no risk to my remaining kidney. Started me on a Heparin (blood thinner) drip today as a precaution.

If there is a clot it continues to be treated with blood thinner. If there’s no clot, the chest pain could be the result of a bunch of possible things of a less serious nature.

One more night in my 10th floor room overlooking beautiful north Michigan Avenue.

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