So much for my quiet civic holiday Monday.
From 11am to 5:30pm, I sat in the emergency ward of St. Mary's Hospital. As I was going out to the gym this morning, my mother phoned me, begging for help. She was all but incapacitated by severe back pain, and needed medical attention. So I drove her to the hospital, hoping it wasn't serious.
It wasn't serious (a pinched nerve -- sciatica -- but serious pain aplenty), and she got her X-ray, her pain shot, and drug prescription. However, I admit to be stunned by the long wait. The VERY LONG wait! Knowing about horrendous ER waits didn't prepare me for the actual experience (or the fact that I was bored stiff, having finished both of the books I brought with me to pass the time).
The St. Mary's emergency department is divided into three sections, in descending order of trauma and acute care. My mother, having only back pain (since when is that type of pain deserving of an "only"?) was placed in the least acute of the three sections. Which means, depending on the condition of others coming into the hospital, we could be bumped down the list at any time.
It seemed promising to begin with. We were assessed by the triage nurse the moment we entered the emergency room. The secretary processed my mother in a matter of minutes, and a kindly volunteer led us to the ward, where my mother was given a private, curtained off bed.
So far, so good. We figured we might be bucking a trend, considering that many people were still away on vacation. Such silly thinking on our parts...
As the hours passed, I slowly began to wonder if I was wrong to not support the idea of a two-tier health system. After all, if pulling out my credit card could get my mother instantaneous service, wouldn't that be acceptable? She lay in that bed, wracked with pain, and I couldn't do a damn thing except fume at the lack of attention she was receiving.
I know I shouldn't be that angry. No talk of money ever passes a person's lips when being admitted to a hospital in Canada. It's one less thing to worry about in life, and it's a legacy we all cherish. But what good is a free, accessible medical system if the wait times are absolutely insane?
This, more than anything, is the main problem at the heart of our over-inflated health care system. More than ever before, I believe that Prime Minister Paul Martin's desire to set reduced waiting times as an achievable goal in the remaking of medicare is priority number one. Having just experienced a useless, mind-numbing waste of time that could have been put to better use helping my mother, I can't honestly believe that anyone could argue something to the contrary. Emergency room waits, waits for specialists, waits for MRI's....WAITING is the enemy.
The Premiers can bitch all they want about their lack of health care dollars. They can propose tactical shots across the federal government's bow (ie. pharmacare) until the crack of doom. But if they don't address this problem of wait times, then I'm not going to be the only son or daughter to be ticked off. And if you're the government, ticked off people are not the ones you want showing up at ballot box. Someone should ask Ralph Klein, Jean Charest, Dalton McGuintuy and Gordon Campbell the following question: what good is pharmacare if you wither away and die before the doctor gets a chance to actually diagnose a need for drugs!
Do you hear that? That's the sound of crickets chirping.
