How I ended up spending the night in the Emergency Room

I ended up being admitted overnight to the emergency room after my doctor noticed slight jaundice during a routine screening colonoscopy. I arrived around 7:00 p.m. Friday and wasn’t discharged until about 8:00 Saturday morning. They ran a liver CT scan at 2:00 a.m. and a liver ultrasound at 4:00 a.m., then made me wait hours for the results. In the end, everything was normal. They never figured out what had caused the concern.

It was one of the worst experiences of my adult life. The ER was a zoo. The man in the bed next to me was a drug addict. He told the ER doctor, “I smoke weed laced with heroin and cocaine.” He kept me in endless conversation about how much he hated Trump. He said he lost his benefits under Trump, then lost his apartment, and now lives on the street — across from the White House.

For what it’s worth, the colonoscopy itself was completely normal.