Amid the coronavirus, what constitutes an emergency?

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  • What constitutes an emergency?
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OKLAHOMA CITY – The coronavirus pandemic has even healthcare professionals anxious, leaving one Comanche County family wondering how the term “emergency” is defined.

Heather Murr of Chattanooga said that about 11 a.m. March 25, while she was in her kitchen, she turned her back to her toddler momentarily in order to get something out of her oven.

Her 2-year-old daughter, Mayleigh, took that moment to stick her hand into the trash and grab an opened tin can. “She sliced a finger pretty badly,” Mrs. Murr said.

The finger was bleeding profusely “and we couldn’t get it to stop,” she said, so she and her husband, Quinton, wrapped the girl’s hand in a towel.

First they called their daughter’s pediatrician, but were told “he doesn’t do sutures in his office anymore.”

Next they called an Urgent Care clinic in Lawton. “They told us to go to the emergency room” at Comanche County Memorial Hospital, Mrs. Murr said.

“Given the situation, we wanted to avoid” the potential for exposing themselves and their young daughter to the coronavirus, she said. Their daughter has asthma and her husband, a sales representative for a livestock company in Marlow, is in a high-risk group for pulmonary ailments.

So they opted to try another Urgent Care clinic in Lawton.

“When we drove up, there was only one other car in the parking lot,” Mrs. Murr said. The clinic had a sign on the glass, front door. “My husband used his cell phone to call the number that was posted on the door and talked to someone inside the clinic. It took several minutes before he finally convinced them to let us come inside.”

No one was in the lobby. A doctor appeared, dressed in medical garb and a mask over her mouth and nose, looked at Mayleigh’s bleeding finger “from several feet away” and advised the Murrs to “go to the ER.”

Exasperated, they gave in and drove to the hospital.

Quinton snapped a photo of his daughter’s finger wound and walked into the Memorial Hospital Emergency Room. He explained what had happened “and they suggested we go to Urgent Care.”

After he explained that they’d already been to two such clinics already, “A nurse came out, looked at the photo, and advised us to clean the wound thoroughly, apply some antibiotic cream and keep the finger bandaged.” 

And see a doctor “if it looks like it’s not healing properly.”

So the family returned home, where the Murrs unwrapped the bloody towel, washed Mayleigh’s injured hand, and applied an antiseptic cream to the gash in her finger. 

“My concern isn’t with the hospital,” Mrs. Murr said. “I want to know why Urgent Care is open if they won’t do anything to help relieve the strain on the hospital” caused by the spread of the coronavirus. “Believe me, we didn’t want to go to the hospital and add to their burden, not at a time like this,” she said.

“There’s so much confusion right now about what to do with people” who are sick or injured.