Emergencies: Illness or Dumbness?

I was wondering the other day, after leaving Walmart, whether more visits to emergency rooms are caused by sickness or stupidity. Whether more come from "I'm having trouble breathing" or "Hold my beer."

It's a good question, I think. We like to pretend that all the bad things that come our way are from bad luck or karma or even the malice of others, but a lot of them surely come upon us because we are being dumdums. Just how much does stupidity account for our use of emergency medicine? With a holiday weekend upon us, it seems like a good time to have a look at this.

"How'd he get an M-80
stuck in there?"

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (and let's assume they still have some credibility on these things after Chinese Death Virus) says that of 130 million visits per year, 35 million are injury-related. (Forty percent of us were in the ER, according to this, although some people skew the numbers, either because they are very ill and go multiple times, or because they use the ER as a primary care service). It looks like the regular health emergence far outweigh the accidents.

Of course, if our friends in the health bureaucracy were to weigh in, they might say Nay Nay! That so many of those illnesses were caused by people doing stupid things, like eating fatty foods, drinking, smoking, being sedentary. not getting vaccinated, and so on. Any ER visit resulting in those things must be counted as stupidity! Why, if they were smarter about their health, they might never have to go to the ER at all! 

I guess they'd be right in a way -- eating every meal at Carl Jr.'s, for example, or drinking a handle of vodka a day would be poor choices for someone who wants to be healthy. But it's also no fun to talk about; really, it's anti-fun. Somehow it's a lot more fun to wonder how many people's last words were, "Hey, watch this!"

Just to show that the CDC is a confusing morass, however, in another section they post, "Number of emergency department visits for unintentional injuries: 97.9 million". How did we go from 35 million to 97.9? No answer. But let's leave it there. 

I guess if I wanted to dive deep enough into the stats available to the public, I might find out how many people got hurt doing any of the following:

• Not running from fireworks quickly enough
• Jumping on a rickety ol' trampoline
• Thinking they're still 16 when they're over 50
• Swinging on a rope
• Trying to jump something on a bike
• Dancing too enthusiastically
• Pretending to be a superhero for a kids' party
• Trying to do an amazing feat of dexterity of any kind (no dexterity actually being demonstrated)
• Jumping in a pool without looking to see where the water is
• Standing too close to the piñata whacker 
• Showing playfulness by trying to dance on a table or other object not intended for dance
• Attempting winter sports out of season (and vice versa)
• Playing on the kiddie jungle gym
• Trying to slide across the hood of the car like a TV cop
• Attempting a keg stand when college is waaaay in the rearview mirror
• Parkour at any age

As you can see, many of these items could be accompanied on the police report by "Alcohol was involved." So be careful out there this weekend, folks -- if you bother to read this blog, you're precious to me!