Emergency Room

Glendale resident Esther Levine didn't want to sit at home, even after retiring twice. Levine, 88, retired from a 20-year-career in banking and decided to go back to work again in the industry, performing a range of tasks from bank teller to clerk for the next 21 years. After the second retirement she found volunteer work at Glendale Adventist Medical Center. "I want to be active," said Levine, the mother of two, grandmother of six and great-grandmother of 17. "I'm not one to stay home."

Janine Marnien The staff at Verdugo Hills Hospital is tired of treating patients in the hallways of its emergency room. But a construction project adding additional beds and treatment rooms is set to change that. The emergency room is undergoing an estimated $1.3-million face-lift. By the time it's finished, hospital staff and patients will be able to enjoy two more treatment rooms, a waiting room with a special section for children and five additional beds.

Dr. Armand Dorian prefers to work in the Emergency Room at Verdugo Hills Hospital because he likes living on full adrenaline. Millions of television viewers will have the opportunity to watch Dorian reenact four of his adrenaline-inducing emergency room cases on this season's episodes of Untold Stories of the ER, which airs Monday nights at 9 p.m. on The Learning Channel. "They routinely e-mail ER physicians for story ideas, looking for new show material," Dorian said. "One night there was a really sad case, and I was really upset and frustrated afterwards so I sat down that night and wrote the story and sent it in."

Two weeks ago at about 3 in the morning, I woke up screaming. My lower back went into muscle spasms that delivered a dose of pain unlike anything I have ever experienced. Each episode lasted about 15 seconds and then calmed down for about 10 minutes. Then it began again and repeated at intervals. I finally asked my wife to call for an ambulance because I was unable to move without excruciating pain. I asked her to request that no sirens be used so as not to awaken my neighbors in the middle of the night.

When Armen Oganesian was 13, his father came to Glendale Adventist Medical Center for heart surgery. It took the near death of his father to make him realize what he wanted to do with his life. "I don't know how to describe it," said Oganesian, a 21-year-old Glendale resident. "It's a crazy feeling … How can you thank a person like that? Who's given so much back to you? I would like to do the same for other families as the doctors did for me." Oganesian, a volunteer in the emergency room of Glendale Adventist, decided that day to become a doctor.

Gorging on high-sodium and sugary foods could land a lot of people in the hospital emergency room on Thanksgiving, physicians and officials warned. While emergency room physicians do see their fair share of Thanksgiving-related burns, improper eating tops the list of reasons for hospital visits, said Dr. Cheryl Lee of Glendale Adventist Medical Center. Lee has worked the hospital's emergency room every Thanksgiving, and like most years, patients start trickling in around 5 p.m. after most people have eaten dinner.

Harry Peterson gazed intently at a heart-rate monitor as lines indicating his heartbeat flashed across the screen. About 15 other kindergarten and pre-school-aged children sitting Indian-style on the floor watched his heartbeat, too. Students from La Cañada Flintridge's Hogg's Hollow Preschool and Kindergarten toured Verdugo Hills Hospital's Emergency Room on Friday decked out in powder-blue polo shirts bearing the school's name. Hospital volunteer Ruth Plowman led the group of excited children on the emergency-room tour.

Ryan Carter Faced with crowded emergency rooms and an increasingly older local population, officials at Glendale Adventist Medical Center are embarking on a massive reconstruction of the campus. The $100-million project will increase the number of beds at the facility by almost 100 -- from 368 to 463 -- by 2007, officials said. The master plan, introduced publicly April 22, also includes a new ambulatory surgical center, acute care tower, medical office building, new equipment, new parking structure and new roads for better traffic circulation.

Paul M. Anderson GLENDALE -- It's not just the holiday season. It's the flu season, too. So be advised: Area emergency rooms are booked solid. If you come down with the flu this holiday season, your best bet for quick treatment is the family doctor. "People have waited for hours here just to be seen for a simple cold," said Dr. Evelyn Wong, an emergency room doctor at Glendale Adventist Medical Center. "We've even had people calling us from Glendale Memorial Hospital asking us how long the wait is here."

A dark-haired woman hid her weeping eyes in the harsh light of the emergency-room lobby. She leaned her quaking body over as she sobbed into the shoulder of her companion. Volunteer Carol Hounsell approached them slowly. "What's the matter, honey," she asked, and leaned down to place her hand on the woman's shoulder. "Let me go find someone to help you." Hounsell left the distraught pair and in less than two minutes the triage nurse around the corner called the woman's name.

Two men were sent to the hospital and three men face charges of assault with a deadly weapon following a fight that broke out early this morning behind Giggles Nightclub. The fight began at around 2:20 a.m. behind the club, located at 215 N. Brand Blvd., and it spilled onto Orange Street, said Sgt. Dan Suttles with the Glendale Police Department. Noe Alvizo, 21, Jose Rabelero, 23, and Richard Barahona, 20, were charged with assault with a deadly weapon in the incident. Hamilton Velasquez, 25, and Ronald Velasquez, 28, were taken to USC County Hospital, Suttles said, adding the cause of the argument that led to the fight is unknown.

Having a son with hydrocephalus means that we are frequent visitors to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Josh is often in the emergency room, when we suspect that there could be a problem with the shunt that drains the excess cerebrospinal fluid from his brain to his abdomen. He has regular MRIs, as well as appointments with physicians in various departments, such as neurosurgery, ophthalmology, urology, neurology and gastroenterology. I am also on the Family Advisory Council at the hospital, so our family is very excited about the opening of the long-awaited new hospital facility.

Last September I wrote about how President Obama's health-care reforms directly impacted our family. Our 7-year-old son has hydrocephalus, a lifelong, life-threatening medical condition. Since this is a pre-existing condition, prior to the reform's changes, he would likely have had a difficult time getting an individual health-care plan or been forced to pay higher premiums. My son is not alone. According to a new study by the Department of Health and Human Services, up to 50%, or 129 million, non-elderly Americans have some type of pre-existing health condition, and up to one in five non-elderly Americans with a pre-existing condition (25 million individuals)

Gorging on high-sodium and sugary foods could land a lot of people in the hospital emergency room on Thanksgiving, physicians and officials warned. While emergency room physicians do see their fair share of Thanksgiving-related burns, improper eating tops the list of reasons for hospital visits, said Dr. Cheryl Lee of Glendale Adventist Medical Center. Lee has worked the hospital's emergency room every Thanksgiving, and like most years, patients start trickling in around 5 p.m. after most people have eaten dinner.

In battling ailments from asthma to alcohol abuse, Glendale Memorial Hospital and Medical Center is looking to give away more than $100,000 to local charities. Since 1999 the hospital has doled out more than $1 million to nonprofit groups seeking to improve public health in the region, hospital spokeswoman Danielle Grossman said. Local groups have until Aug. 20 to submit letters seeking some of the $102,000 the hospital has set aside this year. Past recipients have included the Salvation Army of Glendale, the American Red Cross, the Glendale Community Free Health Clinic and the Armenian American Medical Society Ladies Auxiliary.

I was talking to a friend the other day about being risk-takers as kids, and we joked that with all the stupid stuff we did, it?s amazing that we survived childhood. It made me think back to some of the things I did that should be filed under ?looked good on paper.? When I was about 5, my sister had a big tricycle that had two steps on the back to get to the seat. Of course I was too little to ride it, but that didn?t stop me. I remembered seeing an old Laurel and Hardy movie where one of them rode a bicycle down a long staircase, and it looked completely plausible to my kindergarten brain.

Many of you who have read the Feb. 20 article “Doctors hit by budget cuts” may think it has nothing to do with you. But it is part of an ongoing problem that affects every person in Glendale. Under the federal Emergency Treatment and Active Labor Act, every hospital with an emergency room must diagnose every patient who comes to the emergency room. If the patient has an emergent need (roughly a medical problem like a heart attack that could cause death, disability or pain if not treated)

Urgent-care facilities in Glendale and Burbank are trying to draw on the growing totals of patients who don’t have health insurance and end up pursuing routine treatments at already strained hospital emergency rooms. The facilities provide treatments for minor fractures, colds, infections and other maladies that might otherwise be dealt with in a doctor’s office. But they don’t require appointments and offer extended hours to be comparable substitutes for emergency rooms, providers said.

Imagine that it is your first time in the emergency room. When you arrive, everything begins to happen all at once. Doctors and nurses are hovering over you, speaking English you don’t understand. Your family asks, “What do I need? Who do I talk to? Where do I go?” Or imagine having a headache that won’t go away. Are you having a stroke? you ask yourself. No. It’s just stress. So you put it off, because you don’t know the warning signs. You don’t know when you’re supposed to get yourself to an emergency room on the double.

GLENDALE — A 46-year-old former soccer coach and graduate of St. Francis High School, who also attended Glendale Community College, was fatally wounded Thursday along with a 56-year-old man after a Long Beach Memorial Medical Center colleague shot them and then himself, authorities said. Hugo Bustamante, of Cypress, was discovered in the pharmacy area of the hospital, according to the Long Beach Police Department. He was transported to the emergency room, where he later died.