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Any 5 year old child who has played in the dirt with a stick will tell you that in order to empty a puddle of water, it’s not enough to carve out a trench for the water.
YOU HAVE TO HAVE A PLACE FOR THE WATER TO FLOW TO.
Otherwise, it will only fill up the trench.
You must dig ANOTHER indentation large enough for the water to flow into, to alleviate the pressure.
If the hospital wards are closed and there is no place for sick people to be nursed and to heal and recover, then the Emergency Rooms will continue to overflow. And the waiting times will increase and increase. And the hallways will still be full and people will be unattended.
Adding more Ambulances is NOT the answer.
Giving more money to the people who work in the ERs in NOT the answer.
Creating another (hidden) room to hold the acute patients is NOT the answer.
The reasons the Politicians are not anxious to spend the money to fix this situation is because THEY ARE NOT THE ONES WAITING IN THE HALLWAYS!
When a Politician (or a family member of theirs) goes to Emergency, do you think they will waiting 12 hours before a doctor even looks at them? No way.
The people who control our provincial purse strings are NOT the ones doing the suffering, so they won’t do any real solution until we tell them what we think, remind them they work for US and make them do the right thing.
Because there is one thing all politicians fear more than getting sick. And that’s NOT getting elected again.
Write, write, write to them. It makes a difference.
(And maybe if you send them a copy of my pretty pictures, they will be able to understand what we are talking about).
As I’ve mentioned before in my blog, I have a very sick mother. She has been in the Emergency Rooms of every hospital in our city many times over the past 20 years.
Even a simple cold or flu can quickly turn into pneumonia and in 24 hours she'll lose the ability to breathe.
Her lungs are pumping, pumping, pumping for air but she gets so little oxygen into her blood stream that she suffocates.
That's when I call 911. The paramedics arrive, give her a shot to open up her lungs and hook her up to an oxygen tank. Then the ambulance arrives to transport her to the Emergency Room. (whichever one is accepting patients)
It can be really scary. What’s more scary is when I’m riding around in the front of the ambulance with the driver and he gets the call over the radio that all the ER's are “Red Light”. That means they are all full and NONE of them are accepting patients.
The first time this happened I said to the driver, “This is some sort of joke, right?”
It wasn’t. I asked him, “So what do we do now, just drive around?”
He said, “I’m afraid so. We drive around about mid-way between the two main hospitals so that when we get a ‘Green Light’ from one of them, we can go there.”
On one particular trip to the ER, Mom got an actual bed right away. NOT parked in the ER hallway. I was so grateful. But then she lay in that bed struggling for each breath for the next 10 hours. Nobody came to examine her or even check on her.
Now the trick in the ER is to be persistent with the Personnel but not to actually annoy them. Because if you annoy them, they will purposely make your waiting time longer. (I swear to God it’s true. They’ve actually been so hostile and have admitted to me that’s what they are doing)
For those of you who haven’t had the “Alberta ER Experience” this is how it is suppose to go:
1) you are admitted to a bed
2) A doctor examines you and orders whatever tests he/she thinks you need
3) Various people come to do the tests on you
4) The doctor comes back to look at the test results and make a diagnosis and prescribe a treatment.
Now that’s still the procedure, the problem is that it can now take anywhere from 8 to 48 hours for that to be done.
(What did that comedian say once, “I don’t want to do something that feels GOOD for 48 hours!”)
Because Mom has many health problems she is on a large amount of different drugs. (Including 3 different types of painkillers) But in the ER if the doctor hasn’t made his diagnosis (step # 4), you get no medication. Not even your usual pills. Also, until that diagnosis, No Food and sometimes NOT EVEN A GLASS OF WATER.
I sat next to Mom, on this specific occasion, and watched her struggle for breath. Every hour or so, I would go to the nurses station an ask (again) if they knew when the doctor would be arriving. Yet I have to make sure me and my questions aren’t interpreted as me “being a nuisance” or they will never come to attend to Mom.
Even when I asked if I could get her something to eat or drink the answer was, “Not until the doctor says so”.
So I go back to my chair and watch. And watch. And watch. As a writer, I do a lot of watching all the time anyway, but you would be surprised what I’ve seen during my massive amount of hours in the ER. I can state without exaggeration, “The closest you will get to the pit of hell in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, is it’s Emergency Rooms.”
So this particular time I was sitting and watching and I couldn’t help but notice this janitor. He was a young man who looked not much past his his teen years. He was wandering everywhere.
He would roam around not doing much of anything. Visiting the nurses. Making jokes with the nurses. Flirting with the nurses.
At the point when I went to the nurses station to ask if I could get a cup and give Mom a drink of water (and denied) this young janitor was sitting on one of those office chairs that spin and he was … spinning. He would see how dizzy he could make himself and then stand up and see if he could walk a straight line. The nurses seem to find this very funny. (It might have been, but I wasn’t in much of a humorous mood at the time).
I went back to my chair next to Mom. She asked if I had gotten her the water and I just had to say, “Sorry. They said no water.”
As I sat there I noticed that the janitor hadn’t actually done much janitorial work. When I first saw him, he was rolling one of those yellow buckets with the mop in it around and around the ER but not actually taking the mop out to clean a floor. I figured he must be the hospital director’s nephew or something because I watched him for 6 hours and never saw him do anything that resembled work.
Finally, at the 10th hour of our stay, a nurse came in and said the doctor would be in momentarily. You could have heard my sigh from a mile away. At that point I would have been grateful just for Mom to get some water. Her fever was high and her lips were dry and cracked.
About 15 minutes later the doctor comes around the corner with his clip board. He jerks back the curtain that partially hid Mom’s bed and introduced himself in a business like manner.
“Hello. I’m Dr. [ ]. What seems to be the trouble today?”
You’ll never guess but ... It was the “Janitor”!
I sat there with my mouth open. I’d been watching him for hours doing NOTHING. He was sitting right there when I asked for the glass of water and still he didn’t come over and see Mom. UGH!
When I finally gathered my wits about me, all I seemed to be able to do was just glare at him.
He did a quick examination of Mom and noticed some bruising on her arm. Part of Mom’s disease is that she gets bruises all over her body that come and go. But when Dr. 'Janitor' saw the bruises he looked at me suspiciously.
He asked Mom forcefully, “How did you get these bruises Mrs. Rahn?!”
At that point Mom was in pretty bad shape. Besides the pneumonia, she had a 103 temperature and was dehydrated. She looked at me to help her with the answer and she responded,
“I don’t know. How did I get them Laura-Lee?” (poor Mom)
The doctor must have thought I inflicted them, was abusing her and then coaching her on what to say about them. Then he started glaring at me. Giving me the dirty looks you reserve for Senior abusers and child molesters. But the interesting thing was I was so angry with him for leaving Mom to suffer for so long, the look I was glaring back at him was even worse than the look he was giving me. If ignoring suffering people the way he did isn’t classified as abuse, I don’t know what is.
After looking at my face, I think he decided not to make a fuss about the bruises on Mom's arm and quickly ordered a bunch of tests for her and quickly left to see the next patient.
Then he saw another patient and another and another ... He went to 7 patients after Mom. Some of whom had been suffering worse than Mom and calling out for help. Help that didn’t come. I watched him spend less than 5 minutes with each of his patients and when he went back to the nurses station, he put on his jacket, announced he was “checking out” and went home for the day. His shift was apparently over. He would leave the diagnosis and treatment for the next doctor.
The worse part of all this? …
I consider this one of the lighter moments in ER. One of the easiest trips Mom made there.
“Oh, I could a tale unfold.” – Shakespeare
Another time when Mom went to the ER, she spent an entire day in the hallway. Three nurses shifts lasting 8 hours each. (for those of you not great with math, 3x8=24) Twenty-four hours in a hallway. But we weren’t the only people with problems that day either. There was a little boy there (6 years old) who had arrived BEFORE us and was still there AFTER Mom got out of the hallway and into a bed.
A dog had bit him in the nose and ripped most of if off. He sat in a chair (with his Mom and Dad standing next to him), and a wad of bloody Kleenex tissues held to his nose. His Mom was speaking words of comfort to him and his Dad was pacing and trying to keep from going insane. (for more than 24 hours)
At one point his Dad finally blew a fit and demanded for them to get a doctor. A nurse told him the hold up was that they were waiting for a specific plastic surgeon to arrive. She said to the Dad, “You don’t want your son to be scarred for life, do you?”
He backed down. But another 10 hours later and he didn’t care if his son was scarred or not. He demanded to see a doctor. Any doctor. The nurse said they were still waiting for the plastic surgeon. He couldn’t be reached because he was on a golf course and didn’t have his cell phone with him.
(I kid you not)
Mom was lying in the hallway with a broken back that day, so I had lots of time to talk with this family.
I couldn’t leave Mom alone in the hallway with a broken back but I managed to find the store room and ransacked it for Kleenex.
All I did was bring this small family a couple of little boxes of Kleenex tissue and they were so grateful, you’d have thought I was the angel Gabriel descended from on high.
Story after story I have in my mind:
People vomiting and not getting help or even a basin to throw up in.
People left laying in their own diarrhea for hours.
People freezing and shivering from shock, calling out with chattering teeth for help and being completely ignored.
They don't even have enough pillows for everyone to have one.
People going without food for a couple of days.
There is one thing that most of the people who work in the Emergency Room don’t understand, that it is within THEIR POWER to stop it from being “The Pit” (as they call it) and make it a place of mercy and healing.
When I’m in Emergency with Mom, I do the most simple of things: bring Kleenex, get a blanket from the warming oven, get them a kidney basin to throw up in, find a sheet they can use as a pillow, bring a waiting family member a cup of coffee.
Sometimes I can’t do any of that. Sometimes it’s just a listening ear so they can vent their fears. (Because, I’m convinced, one of the greatest pains this world will ever know is for a person to watch someone they love suffering and being completely helpless to stop it because your pleas for help are falling on deaf ears)
As a Christian, so many people ask me, “How can you believe in a God who allows suffering?”
Let me answer by saying this, “I’ve never seen God cause suffering, but I’ve seen people cause plenty of it. So I ask you this:
‘How can you believe in PEOPLE who would allow suffering?’
‘How can medical personnel be trained to help, then not?’
‘How can they be paid to do the basic of ministrations and forsake them?’
‘How can they listen to the constant cries for help and mercy and turn a deaf ear and a blind eye?’
‘How can the people at Alberta Health Services who are responsible for this and who have the power to stop so much of this suffering, sleep at night or look at themselves in the mirror?’”
You answer MY questions and then I’ll answer yours!
I remember the very first time I went to vote. I was 19 years old, I lived in British Columbia and the election was Provincial.
Ah. Do we ever forget the first time we practice that wonderful thing called Democracy?
I knew all the Candidates, what they stood for, all the issues and had even asked God who he thought I should chose.
I was R-E-A-D-Y!
My older brother and mother came with me. We made it a special event. The first time we would all vote together as a family.
As my brother was driving us home he asked me, “So, Laura? How did you vote? Did you vote the right way?”
I responded, “Absolutely! The Rhino Party across the board!”
He flipped his head around to look at me in the back seat and almost gave himself whiplash.
“You’re kidding, right?” He asked quite intensely.
I just smiled. And hummed a little tune.
At that moment I realized one of the best parts about my vote. It’s MINE. All mine. Nobody can make me vote a certain way because they will never know if I’ve actually done it. It’s between me, my conscience and my God. (How many things can you say that about?)
It’s what our wars are fought over. It’s what people died to preserve (and are still dying for). It’s a sacred thing.
Now I should say that my brother loves politics. So around election time he gets a real gleam in his eye. How many times did he explain to me why I had to vote a certain way?
“Listen Laura. You’re not getting it. If you vote Liberal and I vote Conservative, our votes will cancel each other out and neither of our parties will win. So let’s get together and chose to vote the same way. My way.”
But come election day all I had to say was, “So, who is the Rhino candidate?” and my brother would start having chest pains.
To this day I don’t think he knows whether I’m joking or whether I actually voted Rhino. (And I’m not telling.)
But as time has gone by and I’ve seen election after election, (Civic, Provincial, Federal) I’ve become very disillusioned. I’ve come to hate politics. I actually have a saying about it that demonstrates my feelings:
“Politics is like a toilet bowl. No matter how clean it is, I still don’t want to drink from it!”
But I still continued to vote, although at some point I stopped voting for who I believed in and started voting for who I thought would do the least damage. Or who I thought had lied the least. Definitely a case of “the lesser of two evils”.
I even had a plan once to organize a “Spoiled Ballot Protest”. It was back in the days when you went to vote and they crossed your name off the “Voters Registration List” to show that you had showed up to vote, then they gave you the ballot and you would make your mark beside your candidate of choice on a little private area. But with my idea, instead of picking a candidate, you would purposely spoil your ballot by writing “None of the Above”.
I figured that if the “High Powers” discovered that 90% of the people turned up to vote but 85% of the ballots were spoiled, then they would know it wasn’t an accident or mistake. Yet, because our ballots are private, they would have no way of knowing who actually spoiled their ballots. So it wouldn’t have been a protest of individuals, but rather it would have been a group of people fed up. They would have gotten the message: “We want to vote. Now give us someone worth voting for!”
Now all that has changed. It happened in my city just a few short years ago. I walked to my local polling station (the nearby Elementary School), they crossed my name off the Registered List, (to show I had come), they gave me my ballot, I went behind that secret little cardboard screen, I cast my vote, and brought it to the lady with the boxes with the slit in the top so I could put my vote in, then watch her cover up the slit again with a copy of the Bible.
(“But, what’s this? Where are the boxes? The slits? The Bible?!”)
This particular time, a lady reached out and took my paper with my “secret” vote on it, looked at it, then she placed it into a contraption that looked like a fax machine. It sucked in my paper (like a fax machine), then spit it out the other side (like a fax machine). A little green light lit up on this Election Machine, then she took my ballot and right before my eyes, … SHREDDED IT!
She told me my vote had been counted and I was free to go.
I think I stood there for a few seconds with a dumb look on my face. But she told me again that I could leave and, God help me, I did. Without one word of protest.
On the short walk home all I could think was, “I should have said something. Maybe ‘Baa, Baa’, because I acted like a stupid sheep.”
She actually looked at who I voted for!
How do I know my vote was even counted?
How do I know that someone isn’t going to just tamper with the machine and the results?
How could I stand there and let her shred my ballot? My “sacred” ballot?
Now my government (and many others) are going to be fully automated by the next election. You will be able to vote online too.
They tell us it will be secure. (And because the Government said so, it must be true, because no hacker could ever break into a government computer)
And, of course, no hacker could ever have access to MY computer to discover who I voted for and perhaps change it.
And, of course, no one in the Government who has access to those computers would ever do anything crooked or immoral or unethical.
Because, as you know, politicians are known for their high scruples and morals. (Okay. Enough sarcasm for the moment.)
But what if they need a re-count? How does that work? Do they get somebody else to come over and read the computer screen?
“Yup. It’s says you won alright.”
They say they HAVE to do it this way because there is such a poor voter turn out. But I promise you, if there is someone worth voting for, the turn out would be massive.
Also, this way, (so says the Government ) the results of the election will be almost instantaneous.
But there’s just one basic truth that all the double-speak in the world can’t get around:
“It’s easier to hit a delete button than it is to dispose of millions and millions of pieces of paper”
If my ballot is gone, my secrecy is gone, my right to choose without any undue influence is gone, my freedom is gone. My sacred vote is gone. Democracy is gone. But no big deal, right?
“Well, Bro. I guess you’ll finally know who I’m voting for. Just like everyone else will”
Now it may just be my opinion, but I wouldn’t mind waiting a few more hours (or days) to find out the results, if it meant that the people we REALLY voted for were going to be our leaders.
Just like some things are worth fighting for, some things are worth waiting for. Privacy, Democracy and Freedom are just a few of those things.
(From now on I suppose my new saying about politics will be:
“Baa. Baa.”)
