I've woken up in a bit of a mood today. I slept OK but I was wracked with various unpleasant dreams so I imagine that's what's made me awaken feeling rather cross with the world.
Things are oddly quiet on the electronic front today. Very little email, no major UKChat catastrophe's looming on the horizon (touch wood), and not alot of anything else either. There's little in the way of news, the most interesting thing I've read so far is that there's a new link between underarm deoderant and breast cancer - lovely, so we all now have to walk around being stinky!
G's mum called us this morning - she was due to go into hospital for an operation on her back but it got cancelled due to a lack of beds available in the hospital. It'll now be sometime within the next 28 days. Can you imagine?. She waited long enough for the appointment and was ready and prepared to go in, and now has to potentially suffer for another month before she'll be fixed. I don't know if this kind of thing happens in Canada. I imagine it probably does. It is similar to the UK in that health care is provided by the state, but there is a 1 tier system only - there is no private option so you cannot bypass the system. It's a mixed blessing really. Obviously overall it's a much better idea as those who cannot afford insurance do not get penalised or treated any differently, but from a purely selfish perspective it was nice, in England, to be able to get referrals to very distinguished gentlemen Doctors in Harley Street and be seen the next day. We do have insurance of a sort here, but it covers things like chiropractic, dental, massage, and perhaps 2 to a room instead of 4 if I go into hospital ever. Not much, basically!
To be fair though, the health system *seems* to work much better here. Prescriptions - there is no state/standard charge. You pay the cost of the drug. You can have a drug plan, which we have through G's work, and that covers 90% of the cost which is wonderful, I never have to pay more than $10 for anything. Without one it would be bloody expensive. Having one, means the Doc will prescribe nice expensive drugs which are more effective than the cheap crap I used to get on the NHS back home.
If I want to see my Dr, I make an appointment and I'm there. I never have to wait longer than 10 minutes to be seen. If I need any kind of scan / x-ray or similar I'm sent downstairs to the place they do that -- no hanging around in hospitals for hours on end. I was given a referral to a neurologist a while ago for migraines and I go to her office which is in a regular medical office building and not a hospital, and the same lack of waiting applies. No wait period for an appointment. And now that I'm officially a patient I can call up and make appointments as & when I want them.
My experience of hospitals here is thankfully, so far, limited - although that is going to change over the next 6 months or so. I had cause to go to the ER in the local Hospital a year or so ago with a pain in my side which felt like it could be appendicitis. Not the best experience. There was a 7 hour waiting period, and the waiting room was covered in vomit which nobody cleared up during the 45 mins I stuck it out before going home in disgust deciding to call an ambulance if it got worse rather than sit there & catch goodness knows what!. Thankfully the hospital I am now going to for this pregnancy is a big swish and far more pleasant place - I refused to have this baby in the local one!
Posted by katie at January 12, 2004 10:05 AMTake a tip from a man who has been there, done it and got the T-Shirt! Just enjoy and relax. Ask Laura about: -
a) Appendicitis during pregnancy
b) Three c-secs thru the same "zipper"
She's done it all, and look at them now.
Best of luck to the tree of you.
Posted by: Jeff at January 12, 2004 05:03 PMMy dad is scheduled for knee replacement surgery. Well, not exactly scheduled; they've told him he should be given a firm date, probably for some time in March or April, in the next month or so. In the meantime, they keep phoning him up to ask if he would like surgery tomorrow (if another patient's surgery had to be cancelled for some reason, they call other people on the waiting list), which is really too short notice for a procedure that will keep him away from home for a while and unable to get around well for a while after that.
I was born at the "local hospital" and ... er, well, yeah, maybe you want to avoid that place, seeing how I turned out :-)
Emergency rooms at pretty well all hospitals are nasty places with long waits in waiting rooms full of sick people. That's just the way it is here. It's worse at some times (like flu season). This is, in part, a consequence of people going to the emergency room when what they really need is a walk-in clinic.
Posted by: Steve at January 12, 2004 09:13 PM