When you walk bloodied into the emergency room with your pal, and after 45 minutes of waiting you scream for someone to help you, and they have three security guards toss you out and you nearly die, well, you call the newspaper.
That, in a nutshell, is Clint Snyder’s story.
He told it to me the other day, just before yet another physician’s appointment. They still do not know exactly what is wrong with him.
He just feels lucky to still be around to find out. And he wanted me to share his story with you.
It happened the night of March 17, St. Patrick’s Day. He and his childhood friend, Patrick Murray, were cooking steaks at Snyder’s Fillmore Street home.
After a few bites, he began choking. And soon he was throwing up blood. Murray picked him up and raced him in his car to Exempla St. Joseph Hospital.
The unfortunate fact is that the hospital, by law, cannot tell its side of the story. After making a few checks, Deb Livingstone, a senior spokeswoman for Exempla Healthcare, said privacy rules preclude her making any comment.
“He really needs to see someone,” Murray, 41, told the two women behind the emergency-room desk. “I think he’s having a heart attack.”
The women asked for Snyder’s identification and medical-insurance card. They told the two men to have a seat.
A half-hour later, after another three trips to the desk, Murray began begging. He is dying, he told the women. They had no bed for him, the women told him. The ER was not packed.
Fifteen minutes later, Clint Snyder, 40, had had it.
“Is anyone ever going to see me?” he shouted. “I was so scared,” he later recalled.
The women called security.
“You two need to leave now,” Murray remembers the officers saying.
“Do you see the blood?” Clint Snyder asked them.
He remembers being carried toward the door by his friend, and the security guards saying they were tired of dealing with St. Patrick’s Day drunks.
“He was taunting me to fight him,” Murray remembered, “and I wanted to, but my priority was Clint.”
Neither had been drinking.
Murray placed his friend back in the car and raced for Denver Health Medical Center, where the ER was swarming with patients.
There, nurses immediately tended to the bleeding Snyder. An IV tube was inserted within minutes, along with a heart monitor.
“It couldn’t have been more than five minutes,” Murray said.
Doctors inserted a tube through Snyder’s nose and into his stomach.
“I just remember watching the blood rush through the tube for hours,” Snyder said.
Test after test was run.
A doctor shook Pat Murray’s hand and told him he’d probably saved his friend’s life by taking him to another ER.
For 12 hours, they pumped blood from Clint Snyder’s stomach. Doctors performed seven biopsies. The results are due this week.
Clint Snyder was released after 20 hours. A mortgage broker, he has not worked since that day. The pain medication prevents him from staying awake for more than four hours.
“Hospitals,” Pat Murray would later say, “are supposed to care. One almost let my friend die. I am just glad Clint is OK.”
Snyder, convinced he ultimately will be fine, says he just wants people to know.
“You don’t throw people out of a hospital,” he said, “especially when they are bleeding and have come to you for help.”
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
