From Bad to Worse

  If you're ever in the hospital and think you might not be getting the care you deserve, here's what not to do:   do not try to call 9-1-1 from your hospital room and say you think you are having a heart attack. The call will not go through, but what will happen is that the Crash Cart will show up in your room. I think they call it the Emergency Response Team, and they will show up in your room within seconds of your call,even in the dead of night, with about 11 team members and all the equipment needed to try to save your life. They will spend a considerable amount of time with you, checking your vitals and running tests.
  The next morning a doctor and an assistant (think good cop/ bad cop) will enter your room and tell you that you're going home today. The doctor will be no-nonsense stern: the assistant, trying for the human touch,  will let you know you're acting on wrong information. Never mind about the heart attack; evidently there is a blood test that can pretty much definitively rule that out, regardless of your description of classic heart attack symptoms.   Don't bother crying: they're not moved by that. Forget threatening to inform your sure-to-be-irate family members: they're totally unimpressed by that. Tell them you live miles away, in the rural mountains, and you don't have any transportation;  they will arrange for you to go by MediCab, reimbursable by your insurance, they say. Tell them you feel sick, live alone,  and are unable to care for yourself, and they will suggest you look into getting home health aides. To put it bluntly, you can't fight the system.     
    Remember the last song played  by the band at closing time in the old nightclub days. "We don't care where you go, but you can't stay here."