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Dear ER, I hate you! The magic is gone. Don't call me anymore.  

post #1 of 25
2/1/02 at 4:42pm
Thread Starter 
Things were so special at first. You were fast paced and exciting. Together we broke new ground and sometimes it was all too much and we cried together. But you've changed. You've gotten frantic and manic. You care more about your doctors soap opera lives than about your patients. The final straw is this: You cannot get through sweeps with seriously endangering the life of a very small child. I feel manipualted and used. We are done er. I am gone like George Clooney.
post #2 of 25
2/1/02 at 5:01pm
hey, i stopped watching er a while back, like before george clooney left, so tell me what happened last night!
i saw a preview where mark's baby was in the hospital but that's all i know. i can't stand to watch anything where a baby is hurting, so we knew to avoid that channel last night!
fill me in!
post #3 of 25
2/1/02 at 6:43pm
Yeah, tell us what happened... ER used to be my guilty pleasure, until my kid got old enough to be scared by what was going on, and I couldn't always reliably have him asleep by 10 pm (or worse, he'd wake up half way through, and need help to go back to sleep!) Although, I did usually wind up really angry at some of the standard hospital messages the included.....

Edited to add: I was really impressed at the creative ways the script writers came up with to get people of the show - nobody just left quielty! Speaking of, who's left?
post #4 of 25
2/1/02 at 7:34pm
Thread Starter 
Oh golly, the message last night is that apparently the drug Ecstacy is bad for small babies and they shouldn't be left in the care of irresponsible teenage sisters who will carelessly leave it where the aforementioned 9 month old can eat two tablets of it. The result of ignoring this PSA is likely to be a screaming baby surrounded by a bunch of medical types shouting and doing things to the baby. Unless it is a frighteningly quiet baby under the same circumstances. They left baby Ella's fate up in the air as a cliffhanger although she was stabalized in the PICU.

It probably wasn't as bad as the very popular 'Vaccinate your kids or they will die' episode, or the 'I refuse to admit I'm pregnant long enough to let you save my unborn baby' episode, or even any one of the 'childbirth is really dangerous' episodes.. it just was a final annoyance. I can just imagine the story guys sitting around a table," Gee, we always endanger babies for ratings, but this year two of our docs have a baby!!! This is great!!" Ugh!

Milo: Let's see, Weaver (just came out), Carter, Greene, some of the original nurses but Saint Carol of the Lake is gone and Dr. Susan Lewis is back as is Jing Mai(Deb) Chen.
post #5 of 25
2/1/02 at 10:24pm
Don't forget the "I took speeders while nursing and killed my baby" one.

The whole show I kept screaming, "what are they doing to that baby to make her cry like that for the show!!!" Not to mention the medical inaccuracies ... I did like the way Elizabeth went bananas on Dr. Death, pushing him right out of the room. I'd have done the same thing. Of course, I wouldn't have been stupid enough to leave my infant in the care of that idiot Rachel, either, so I don't know who to be mad at. Wait, it's just a show ... it's just a show ... it's just a show ...

I swear, if anything happens to Ella they are really in for it. They'll need a bulldozer to dig out from all the letters...

post #6 of 25
2/1/02 at 10:54pm
Smilemomma, thank you for saying that. This is what always makes my skin crawl, that a mother allowed something to be done to MAKE her baby scream and wail like that and then STOOD THERE while they were filming. That's inhuman. And I notice how many camera changes there are, so I know how long, at minimum, they had to let that baby suffer.

Un-Frigging-Real.

Hope she got paid well.
post #7 of 25
2/1/02 at 11:03pm
I stopped watching ER a long time ago. The childbirth scenes used to drive me up the wall. Like when Carol had her twins--one vaginal, the other a c/sect and didn't her uterus rupture or something? I remember someone wanted to do a hysterectomy on her, for God's sake. It's just too silly. I can imagine the producers:"This is great! Since she's having twins, we'll make her push one out and they other one can be a c/section for maximim drama!"
post #8 of 25
2/2/02 at 1:49am
Actually my sister-in-law did have twins, one vaginally and the other by c-section. After the first was born, her cervix closed back up. She continued to labor for several more hours. The baby was not in distress, but it just wasn't happening for such a long time, and my SIL was just exhausted, so finally they did a c-section for the second boy.
post #9 of 25
2/3/02 at 1:46am
The exact same thing happened to me. Wonderful birth with my first twin, dtd, 2 pushes and there she was. Then I went down to 7 cm, only half my uterus would contract, "baby b" never even made it to my cervix.

The next morning we did the section. He was huge! No distress either, he just wasn't coming down. And how long could I wait there, with his sac ruptured and her cord still hanging out?!

But I agree, they milked it.
post #10 of 25
2/3/02 at 5:15am
smilemomma - do your little people have different birthdays?
post #11 of 25
2/3/02 at 9:30am
Yes, but smilemama, they didn't almost do a hysterectomy on you, I'm sure!
post #12 of 25
2/3/02 at 3:49pm
I was highly shocked to wander thru the lounge on my way to bed last night & dh was watching ER & those 2 painful doctors were having some kind of drama in their bedroom with a screaming baby. I stopped watching TV ages ago & ER ages before that, but I get what you mean about the upset baby. Unless their baby was always screaming & I mean really distressed screaming, this was the same episode as the one you mentioned & we're in NZ. So we're not that backwards after all!!!

re: the hysterectomy. A friend of a friend's daughter had an emergency hysterectomy after childbirth a few months ago for a haemorage. She was in hospital & she was in Australia......so it does still go on.
post #13 of 25
2/3/02 at 7:10pm
Quote:
Originally posted by OceanMomma
re: the hysterectomy. A friend of a friend's daughter had an emergency hysterectomy after childbirth a few months ago for a haemorage. She was in hospital & she was in Australia......so it does still go on.
That's true and it sucks, but being a health care professional who used to work in the maternal-child health unit of a hospital, I can say that sometimes a hysterectomy is needed, as crappy as that is.

I still think ER sucks lately, though.
post #14 of 25
2/4/02 at 9:37pm
No, no "near miss" hysterectomy here, but I think they wanted to do Carol's because of hemorrhaging. So not only did they do vbirth and csec, but then they made her nearly bleed to death, then the near hysterectomy, then BACK from the brink .... I'm sure it happens, but it sure happens a lot to the docs who work in *that* ER... :

One of my professors had a hysterectomy at the birth of her first child. She had placenta accreta, where it actually burrows into the wall of your uterus. There's no other way to get it out. She was sad, but blessed by her healthy daughter.

And yes, frolix, my twins have separate birthdays! And it wasn't one of those "minute after midnight" ones, either. I love it, because I insisted the whole pregnancy that they were little individuals. So one was one day, one was the other, one is fair and one is dark, one is male and one is female, one is easygoing and one is ... not so much (), one was natural and one was csec.

Vive la difference!
post #15 of 25
2/4/02 at 11:20pm
smilemomma, I've never heard of twins born on different days although I've sure it happens all the time! I think its neat that they have different 'domains' and yet they share in the twin experience. They sound quite amazing!

burrowing placenta's -- whooaa!! that's a first for my ears too.
post #16 of 25
2/8/02 at 7:09pm
Thread Starter 

Text of an email I sent to ER

I am torn. I am pleased that you are writing Dr. Corday continuing to nurse her baby. It is a
very important issue and it is great that you are representing that. I am confused however. Are
you unaware that most nursing mothers feed their babies directly from the breast? I ask because
the nursing relationships you have shown (Carol Hathaway and now Elizabeth Corday) have
focused exclusively on pumping and bottle feeding. In such a situation as occured on the Feb 7
episode, when Ella was first taken of the ventilator, I cannot imagine any mother chosing to feed
her with a bottle rather than snuggle her close and nurse her. I look forward to future episodes (Okay, a bit of a fib)
and hope to see a more normal nursing relationship in them.
post #17 of 25
2/8/02 at 7:52pm
My guess on the ER dilemma is that the writers are torn between actually wanting to show a character breastfeeding, but having the near impossibility of having a baby nurse the non-lactating breast of an actress who is not mom! My baby wouldn't do it, that's for sure. Unless the baby is truly nursing it's mom, the actress, it would be hard to really show a good nursing relationship on film and TV. I wish they'd try though!!

Michelle
post #18 of 25
2/8/02 at 8:53pm
Thread Starter 
The actress in question, Alex Kingston is a new mum and is, I believe, nursing. Now, it's probably not her baby playing her baby but there are things they could do. The actress could hold the sleeping 'baby actor' in a nursing position. The actress could let her own baby sub in as a 'stunt double' for the nursing shots. You know, they can figure out how to show all kinds of terrible wounds, surgery, etc... and all they can come up with is give the 'nursing baby' a bottle all the time. I just think they could do much better if they were even slightly motivated to.
post #19 of 25
2/8/02 at 9:11pm
I haven't liked the way they have portrayed her mothering skills in general. She's always passing that poor baby off on somebody and is too tired and stressed to deal with her. And the yelling they do in front of that baby!!!
I also agree with Pallas, who would let their real life baby do these shows..there's not enough money in the world...

peggy
post #20 of 25
2/9/02 at 4:43pm
Wow, kama'aina mama, I didn't know that! I havn't seen ER in a few years, and anyway, in France the episodes are about a year behind. Then they show three episodes in one evening, so if I miss it, I'm cooked on understanding the whole season. I also didn't like the show anymore without my favorite characters and writers running lower on ideas, so I gave up. From what you guys say, it's better I did.

Michelle
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Mothering › Forums › Natural Family Living › Books, Music and Other Media › Television › Dear ER, I hate you! The magic is gone. Don't call me anymore.