Treatment you’d only wish on Jack Layton;
We waited nearly an hour for a resident to finally stop by and enquire what the matter was. Appallingly, she had no prior knowledge of why my Mother had been admitted. My shock increased after she asked, in all seriousness, if the angioplasty had been a success. I can only assume that the look on my face caused her to retreat and summon the physician on duty. Exhibiting Solomon like wisdom, the attending doctor suggested that a physical examination was in order. She then disappeared with the resident in tow. A nurse was dispatched who informed us that my Mother would have to be undressed for the examination. Since this Angel of Mercy made no offer to assist, I took it upon myself to undress my bedridden mother in a public corridor, in full view of the passing parade of visitors, patients and staff. (Truth be told, the homeless guy was pretty discrete, or at least preoccupied.)
Mom was eventually examined, in the public corridor, and an ultrasound ordered, all while a street person dumped a filled adult diaper on the floor and replaced her own soiled bed linens in the ward next to us.
Read the whole thing.
Could have been worse, you know. The lady could have been alone.
That would have been… bad.
Lefties will now please explain why we Canadians have the best health care in the world, and why a private care option would be disaster. Ready, go!
My Mom, who lives in Oakville Ontario, recently was forced to purchase some HMO coverage in New York State because she couldn’t wait any more to see a doctor and the subsequent specialists. She recently told me that she never realized how bad the Canadian socialist system was until she got some real medical care in the US.
God Bless the USA and the Free Enterprise system.
So sorry to hear about what your mother went through! Your story is an example of a terrible level of care that I pray is not common. I hope she is doing better now.
As a medical student, I do have to add that one should not blame the resident for not knowing what your mother’s situation was. Residents are tremendously overworked and usually have to see dozens of patients in a very short period of time. Obviously they would like to learn all that they can about their patients, but many times they have been told literally about one minute beforehand that they have to see someone – obviously not enough time to read through pages and pages of information in a chart. The frustration you must have felt at having to explain your mother’s situation again is completely understandable, but trust me when I tell you that the resident was probably frustrated at not being able to tell you more about your mother’s condition as well.
Once again, I hope your mother is doing well and I hope she never has to experience something like that ever again.
I understand the residents situation Dante, but trust me – there was no chart, nothing. Even though we had been in ER for over 3 hours no one knew what was going on.
I was fuming about how long I had to line up to get a licence plate sticker for my car and other sundry idiocies of the ServiceOntario kiosks.
Then I got home and read Arnie’s story, and I realized that my troubles paled in comparison.
Think of the union dues that hospital generates every day from all the sole sourced featherbedding unions running the place.
Dues that end in Whacko Jacko’s NDP pockets
The future of socialized medicine is a walk into the past, we will be required to provide food for our loved ones and feed them. We’ll be required to provide 24/7 nursing care because Nurses are busy doing paper work and many of those nurses aren’t qualified to give a needle, provide meds or hook up an IV (thank the degree programs for those advancements).
I wish I were surprised by Blaze’s story but I’m not it mirrors the average Canadian’s stories. In my town they will give you an xray but no one is qualified to read said xray so it’s off to the city to wait in ER for a diagnosis and cast. Some patients have waited days for treatment, imagine wallowing away the dog days of summer with an untreated fracture? That’s our future under socialized medicine, rationed healthcare until you die waiting. The twisted left will never allow Canadians the lawful right to choose private over state, so much for it’s a woman’s choice right lasses?? I can choose the right to have an abortion and kill my unborn child but I’m not allowed to legally decide on what kind of healthcare I want. Loopy upside down twisted dogma of the mental midgets on the left.
there was no chart, nothing. Even though we had been in ER for over 3 hours no one knew what was going on.
~Blazingcatfur
I’m sorry for your and your mother’s ordeal.
They, healthbots, treat everyone’s documentation like they are state secrets.
When I had a knee problem and needed surgery, not even the specialist who performed the surgery or the other doctors that had to vet me before the specialist got to even talk to me, no one ever got to see all the MRI pictures or all the documents about my case all in the same place at the same time, even if you pay for some of the diagnostics out of pocket, you yourself never get to see any of the documentation.
It’s like some kind of sick relay event where when one healthbot drops the baton no one knows who dropped it.
There is no chain of custody.
It’s FUBAR and I can’t imagine how change in the direction of improvement will ever take place.
Dante, you being a medical student I hope you’re taking notes here.
One word buddy: radiology. No patient contact, no family members freaking out, no smelly yucky things getting on your lab coat, and you get to drive a Porche! There’s a shortage, too.
Of course you’ll have to leave Ontario to do your residency, there’s only two (2) spots in the province. No, I’m not kidding.
My family can identify with Blazingcatfur. Our 80 year old very mentally capable mother was jerked around in a major Saskatchewan hospital for almost seven months during the winter of 2002-03 before she passed away. She was being treated in the coronary care department by a different heart doctor each week. Some of them were surprised when they returned from various other parts of the country for another week on duty to see her still there. Some did not give a rat’s a*#, one commented, “She’s old” (in other words forget it), most tried to discover what the problem was, but one week was not enough when they were busy with other patients.
Finally through our efforts, we forced them through letters to the Health Ministry to assign one local doctor to her. We then got consistent progress in discovering what her problem was, but it was too late.
The treatment problem as we saw it was that there was no consistency in the system that doctors were using to treat her. One week on duty or a return duty week two months later was not good enough.
The final diagnosis was not heart at all, but a lung problem caused by mold in the senior’s home.
As a P.S. to my comment above. The nursing care in general for her personal needs was good even though a few also did not care and one head nurse also said “She is old”. Most of the doctors cared, but one week was not enough for them to discover her problem. The nurses in general are too busy with paperwork.
The administration also tried what we construed to be the “death panel” trick.
Phantom – don’t forget about some areas of pathology. The specialty has a horrible name, but a lot of it is pure office work looking at glass slides. You can drink all the coffee you want. Sweet!
My father was recently ill and died. My experience was that if you’re moderately sick, hospital care is OK, if you are seriously ill, you need an advocate there *all the time* to get good care. (Or, what passes for good care.)
It reminds me of the time I was interrogated in front of a waiting room full of people why I should get a free PSA test and had to explain how my father died of the disease at a young age. I was very upset, this happened about 10 years ago and still remember the incident vividly.
The Phantom,
Why don’t you just move to the USA. Go deal with the crime, bad attitude and everything American that sucks big time.
Don’t wait, do it today, only a few misguided rightoid soles will miss you.
Fiction? The PET Cemetery? Cancer Ward*.
…-
“Yuri drove his mother and father in their little blue Moskvich right up to the steps of Ward 13.
In spite of the slight frost, two women in heavily laundered cotton dressing gowns were standing outside on the open stone porch. The cold made them shudder, but they stood their ground.
Beginning with these slovenly dressing gowns, Pavel Nikolayevich found everything in the place unpleasant: the path worn by countless pairs of feet on the cement floor of the porch; the dull doorknobs, all messed about by the patients’ hands; the waiting room, paint peeling off its floor, its high olive-colored walls (olive seemed somehow such a dirty color), and its large slatted wooden benches with not enough room for all the patients. Many of them had come long distances and had to sit on the floor. There were Uzbeks in quilted, wadded coats, old Uzbek women in long white shawls and young women in lilac, red and green ones, and all wore high boots with rubbers. One Russian youth, thin as a rail but with a great bloated stomach, lay there in an unbuttoned coat which dangled to the floor, taking up a whole bench to himself. He screamed incessantly with pain. His screams deafened Pavel Nikolayevich and hurt him so much that it seemed the boy was screaming not with his own pain but with Rusanov’s.
Pavel Nikolayevich went white around the mouth, stopped dead and whispered to his wife, “Kapa, I’ll die here. I mustn’t stay. Let’s go back.””
http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/b30686/?si=0
(*H/T A. Solzhenitsyn)
Ya notice how not stirred has absolutely nothing for the content of the post?
DAWG showed the civility of an adult, not stirred though.
You’re right Jim, why do you think that is?
Is it shame for what the socialists have wrought, or anger at what the right offers?
maz2, it won’t take too many years for Canada to get to the point depicted by your Solzhenitsyn story. Canada is #26 or #30, depending whose stats you use. In 2008, we visited at least 3 hospitals in Ukraine that look like what the fictional Pavel Nikolayevich saw. Doctors make $300.00 US a month, plus what they can now earn in private practice in the evenings after the fall of the Marxist system.
Ghost of hospitals to come here.
What is really bad is that people are getting used to this level of care. Its the “norm”
People tell horror stories about the Canadian health care system (I have a few myself) like they tell horror stories about Air Canada.
Now I wonder, what do both of these organizations have in common?
regular poster boy, I agree, pathology can be good too. But with radiology you can get into interventional radiology, which is a license to print money in every nation in the world.
I see that enoughsaidat showed up to not-defend healthcare, but instead to fling poo.
As it happens enoughsaid, I got my degree and my license in the USA, and practiced there. It was both lucrative and satisfying.
The “crime, bad attitude and everything American that sucks big time” of which you speak is largely a fabrication of the news media. I myself and most Canadians I’ve spoken to are shocked to find -zero- difference between living in the USA and Canada, other than the greater freedoms and lesser taxes. I’d go back in a heartbeat.
However, going back to the freedoms and money there will be less satisfying than defeating all the cretins like you here in Canada.
Your guys caused the situation we are discussing in this thread. They did it deliberately, and you helped.
We will beat you. Your cause will be publicly reviled and discredited, and all your efforts will come to naught.
Confusion to the enemy!
My dad had great care for his second heart attack.
The problem was his first heart attack was 2 weeks previous and they didn’t bother to fix the problem the first time.
He’s lucky to be alive.
Phantom, like I said at HotAir today, I would like nothing better than to get the huge portion of my taxes that go to health care back and buy a private insurance policy.
The thousands of dollars left over after buying said policy could then go into radical things like consumer products and doing my bit for creating employment etc.
Damn that capitalism!!!
What ticks me off is the annual polls that reassure us that the majority of Canadians:
a)strongly support socialized medicine
b)are happy with the quality of care
They should be asking the seriously ill , the elderly and those in the ER room about the quality of care at critical moments. Then talk to the patients’ families. It is at these stress points that the system fails us. By including those that are generally healthy and have not yet had the pleasure of enduring our glorious system, the MSM can stick a big smiley face over the whole mess.
Besides many of us have never know any other type of medical care. So not being able to find a family doctor, waiting weeks or months for an appointment…years for treatment and being at the mercy of politics or health boards is “normal”.
Birth of socialized medicine = Death of human dignity.
What ticks me off is the annual polls that reassure us that the majority of Canadians:
a)strongly support socialized medicine
b)are happy with the quality of care
It’s called Stockholm syndrome.
Our health systems in the anglosphere are so pitiful we’ve been bested by France.
What ticks me off is the annual polls that reassure us that the majority of Canadians:
a)strongly support socialized medicine
b)are happy with the quality of care
The polls are probably true, too.
What the polls fail to acknowledge is that most Canadians are healthy and have never really needed to experience the system first hand so that they have no idea it is as bad as it actually is.
The majority think the system works like the portrayals in TV shows and movies from the U.S. that they see.
Those portrayals are what Canadians imagine the norm to be.
The reality is shockingly different.
AtlanticJim,
Here’s some content for you…our health care system is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but it works just fine. There will always be horror stories and I feel for the people that suffer.
One need go no further than the homicide of Michael Jackson to see the downside of the American system…all the money in the world that could buy the best of care, and what do you get?
You can move to the USA as well!
AtlanticJim, personally I’d give up every cent of that money if it meant I’d live to see the entire Canadian medical management establishment fired. Every single son of a b1tch that isn’t a doctor, associated professional or a cleaner get let go, bang, the same day.
One half competent cleaner is worth a hundred managers. They don’t add anything of value, they only consume time, money and paper.
You Lefties want to see health care costs drop by 80%? Let the doctor etc. be paid -directly by the patient-. Let the patient buy insurance or not as it suits them, but let it be law that insurance companies are forever banned from dealing with doctors directly. They get to fight with the person whose @ss is on the line, the patient. Not the doctor.
Immediately you will see the cost of a hospital bed drop to a couple hundred a day instead of a couple thousand, and doctor’s fees likewise. Because they will be doing actual WORK FOR THE PATIENT instead of friggin’ with paper all day long.
Which brings up another pet hate of mine, The Chart. The medical chart is supposed to be so you can remember what you did and see what everybody else did since your last visit to the patient. It is not supposed to be a pile of @ss-covering and make-work as thick as the f-ing Toronto phone book. YOU CAN’T READ A PHONE BOOK.
unbelievable moron said: “…our health care system is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but it works just fine.”
Say Mr. moron sir, you wouldn’t mind backing that up with some facts or anything, would you? We’re discussing a guy’s mum who spent 18 hours in the f-ing HALLWAY at TGH with a life threatening blood clot in her f-ing femoral artery.
Who do you think you’re talking to here, boy? The guy who cuts your mom’s lawn?
The only health care professionals that will provide you with good service are the ones you pay directly yourself – the Physical Therapists, the Massage Therapists, the Pharmacists, the Dentist, etc. Any health care professional who is in the system and never have had the gall to send out an invoice for a service they have provided to a patient could care less.
not stirred – your comparison is illogical.
The fact that a doctor prescribed/gave a lethal dose to Jackson is not indicative of the American health care system. Are you seriously trying to tell us that health care, paid by private insurance or by individuals, results in doctors mistreating patients, while health care, paid by public insurance does not have, ever, such a result?
The facts show otherwise; it is a regular situation in Canada that mistreatment, insufficient treatment, in-the-door and out-the-door rapid ‘treatments’, indifferent care, inadequate care, misdiagnosis, etc. are so common in Canada that people go to the US for care and treatment.
Mrs. Blazing here.
One thing folks overlook is: yes, the “waiting list” is long — but they also can’t wait to kick you out of the hospital once you’re in there!
they kicked out my mother in law (who had to get rushed back in) and did the same to my (late) mother a couple of times. There must be a quota of discharges they need to meet every day.
Also: people say that in the US, you can go bankrupt paying for health care and of course, this is true.
Again though:
People expect 2009 treatment at 1959 prices. That’s dumb.
Two: because I was only “allowed” or whatever the word is to see a doctor many months apart for my lupus, it got worse and worse until I got myosytis and permanent muscle damage. Then I couldn’t work for years.
So NOT being treated can be just as $$$ costly as BEING treated, if you see what I mean.
The nerve of folks like Phantom and I eh?
Wanting to spend our hard earned bucks how we best see fit!
And while we discuss front line health care here, another blog is discussing IVF being paid by the ‘government’:our taxes.
It’s all about the money,honey.
BCF, that is a horrible experience. I work in health care…your experience is not the norm. The front line workers are stretched, admin is top heavy and now I hear there is a hiring freeze at Toronto hospitals.
Makes sense to spread the money thinner with IVF doesn’t it? /sarc
Mcguinty’s health care tax hard at work.
What I have noticed and deplore is the difference in care from one Hospital to another.
Mid-June I broke a rib…..disgnosed as a “muscle spasm because it didn’t show on the X-ray—-then the monstrous bruising was declared a “muscle tear”…..finally after I felt the broken ends ripping my flesh a month later (that was not a toyota ad I assure you) I figured it out on my lonesome.
A “chest X-ray” only images the UPPER ribs—not the bottom one.
Having been around the block a few times—all I could expect was a shot of the good stuff—the ER doc—ordered an X-ray (another “chest X-ray–I established). I would have made my old drill sergeant proud (my few words of Hindi fell correctly)—-the ER doc did as I directed and actually felt the break—-then ordered an ultrasound to establish definitively how much other damage had been done—(one of my better students).
Next problemo—a 2 month wait for a slot (Sept 17th).
You get used to everything but hanging my daddy said….
My analysis—-too much beaurocracy and too few real patient care types—-over-worked and rushed.
The main difference I deduce of the two nearby hospitals—-attitude………
My personal GP is super—-last one (an anti-smoking nutbar) was more concerned with arresting my smoking than treating multiple injuries. My associates stopped my from rendering him into a similar state and quickly found a suitable GP.
GRRRR.
In comparison to BCF’s horrible experience…
A few months ago, I sliced my hand open and was rushed by my family to Emergency. As I walked in to Emergency, luckily, there was NO ONE in the waiting room. The triage nurse took a quick look, took down my information and immediately sent me back into emergency.
I was then met by a nurse (immediately) and was taken to a nice big clean emergency room. A doctor saw me within about 5 minutes and I had 6 stitches put in and sent on my way within 45 minutes of arriving.
Pretty good, huh?
Oh, did I forget to add…my sister-in-law works at the hospital and, having received a call from my wife, had run down to emergency and “arranged things” for me. It’s good to know the right people!
(Okay, really, I know I should be incensed on behalf of the public for receiving preferential treatment…but it’s nice to get special treatment every now and then.)
Ain’t socialism grand? Particularly when you’re one of the elite (or can get the perks of the elite).
Phantom said “The “crime, bad attitude and everything American that sucks big time” of which you speak is largely a fabrication of the news media.”
I’ve been in just about all of the United States and you’re right. It is great there and if I can get the money to retire together I will be retiring in Mississippi. The nicest people I have ever met. And Texas is a far more open society than Toronto will ever ever be. Same goes for Arizona, New Mexico, Alabama etc. They think like individuals and they treat people as individuals.
I broke a finger once when I was young. That was 16 hours in emergency. I’ve broken fingers and toes since then. I’d never go to a hospital again for that.
I cut my hand (REALLY BADLY) two years ago. 9 hours in emergency in a Toronto ghetto hospital. Things have really gone downhill from there. I was expecting to wait, but does the wait have to be so bad? The conditions of the dying around me where deplorable. One old man that looked like he was done for was passed out. Nurse called his name. He didn’t answer so she went down the list. He woke up after she left. The next nurse told him he had to wait in line like everyone else.
I got called in to a “room” about 6 hours in. Bleeding had stopped. Watched the doc make the rounds (no other docs to watch). He got to me 3 hours later and put the stitches in in about 5 minutes. Told me not to cut myself again. He was nice.
I have personally experienced both US and Canadian health care systems first hand. Plus one of our of kids was born in the US, the other 2 here in Canada.
Neither system is perfect, but overall the US system is much better. My wife had a very pleasant stay in a lovely hospital in the US with our first child, she could hardly wait to get out of the hospital here in Canada when the other two were born. In the bed next to her was a drug abuser, and in the bed next to him was a 17 year old new father who kept fighting with the nurses. The joys of Canadian health care.
Third child was c-section and the doc spent the entire time during the operation talking to his associate about his golf swing. Barely said hello to my wife, she was just another pay check. The doc in the US was a 1000 times more considerate with his patients, and the irony was he was Canadian!
From the time Canadians are born they are told our health care system is wonderful, so most of them simply just believe it. But then most socialist ideas can only be sold via indoctrination.
Sasquatch,
Congrats on finding a new GP. Mine retired and couldn’t give away his practice. My wife and diughters go to a female doctore, and despite already having 4 patients from my family she won’t take even one more patient.
According to CHRA website the only doctor in NW Calgary taking new patients is OB_GYN, not really good for a soon to be 50 yr old male.
I can personally rpovide similar horror stories to BCF (a daughter whose BP was 60 over 30) waiting in the hall with the paramedics. I am sure most of us could also provide similar anecdotal evidence regarding our wonderful Health Care.
As for not stirred, this right winger would like to take his “soles” (maybe you don’t know what a soul is)and put it up some bureaucrats rectum to perform the enema our system rightfully deserves.
If I have to go to a hospital I want a handgun.
TJ: “I have personally experienced both US and Canadian health care systems first hand”
Same here (I have experience with both systems.)I had three children in Canada and care was very good. I have no complaints. In the States if you do not have proper coverage care is barbaric. The problem in Canada is too few dollars/doctors, too many people needing care. I don’t think this is the fault of the public system, which I happen to like.
You have to make a choice. Is everyone going to be covered in your system (single payer) — therefore more stress on the system and care goes down, longer waits, druggies in the next bed, etc. If we wish to toss a few million people off the train, of course quality of care would go up.
Get ready America.
And Ted Kennedy will be laughing from his corner of Hell every time someone suffers like this.
anecdotal. doesn’t prove a thing.
I went in for a barium exam today and was finished in the hour. very professional & polite lab tech & medic. didn’t cost me a nickel.
I trump your corridor exam.
p.s. we’re all adults here, if I had to change in the corridor wouldn’t bother me a titch.
not stirred said: “our health care system is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but it works just fine.”
So how bad does it have to get until you no longer consider it “fine”? The fact that his mother’s “room” was in the corridor is bad enough for me (if there was a national emergency I could understand beds in the corridors). Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t be allowed to spend my money on better care and service?
My wife had a similar experience in the Ottawa GH ER when she was waiting for surgery for suspected brain cancer. Only we were lucky. The doctor had given us a heads up of what to expect when he was unable to admit her directly and suggested we go to the ER because that would “get her into the system faster”.
Eventaully my wife’s cancer became too serious to be treated in Canada and I took her to Japan where she received excellent treatment.
How about you read the entire thing curious_george.
I feel very sympthy with old people in canada
waiting list in hospital is very ridiculs and
for old people is more frustrated
my mother said old peoel like a 3 month old child need to take care of them otherwise die soon
and some time they act like a child not patient like when they were younger
ask Queen’s mother who died in age 101 we expect our mother must live 121 years old consider stay in politic life must get short
my mother talk to me rather than joke word or always used old idiom kind of story to teach me short lesson one day I like to made her word to public I am sure you will get amazed by her words
I think sick children hostpial and sick old hospital must join together may be sound funny but both are need special fast care or they will die
” professional” in Canada kind of lazy as to me some of them when we see lawyer or doctore are not fast worker like secretor type with no error mistake I think we must teach professional
being fast is good and being lazy is kind of ill mind too and do not charge us hourly