For more than four hours, Robert Bowers, 22, sat in the waiting room with his wife, April. A tree climber who trims and repairs trees, the Culpeper resident has no insurance.
"I have swelling in my jaw that started two days ago. It's pretty painful," he says.
This emergency room is the second he has visited in two days. On Sunday, he went to the ER at a Culpeper hospital, where a doctor said he may have a viral or bacterial infection and gave him antibiotics. The medicine wasn't helping.
"It hurt more this morning," he says. He drove the 45 minutes to UVA Medical Center because "I think it's a better hospital than where I live."
He arrived at about 4 p.m. and was seen by a triage nurse who took his vital signs, entered him into the computer system and told him to wait in the lobby. He was taken to the exam room at 8:20 p.m. A doctor came 20 minutes later. "It was a pretty long wait," Bowers says. "It seemed busy. This is the longest I've had to wait, but it seems like they check things out a little more."
The doctor who examined him thought he had an infected gland and that the antibiotics he was prescribed may not have had time to work. The doctor planned to try a different antibiotic.
Bowers hadn't seen a doctor in two years, when he went to an emergency room because of an ear infection. His employer doesn't offer insurance, and he and his wife can't afford the $400 a month it would cost.
"That's part of the problem," he says. "I just go to the hospital and see whatever happens. I think it'd be nice if I could get a little more help. It's hard for someone who works for a living to be sick and pay their bills if you have no insurance."
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