day 10270: “don’t screw around tonight…it’s not good for your neck”
Am I allowed to rant and rave about the inefficiencies and ineffectiveness of the Canadian health system if I know nothing about the political background, cutback crap or overworked doctors and nurses?
I had not planned on spending last night in the hospital. I had planned on going to the climbing gym like every other Thursday night, putting in a good three and a half hours of grunting and sweating as I conquered the climbs that have consistently thwarted me, going home, having a nice little cuddle, and that’s about it.
I hadn’t planned on someone decking on the climb beside my climbing partner, hitting him in the head and then sitting in the hospital with him for three hours of worrying and hand-wringing only to be briefly examined by a suspect-competent doctor (patient before us had a cast put on too tightly by the same doctor) and sent on our merry little way.
No Xrays. No painkillers. Nothing but a “Why weren’t you wearing a helmet?” to which our response would be… “Because Dr. Doctor, if you were paying any attention whatsoever, a helmet would not have prevented the type of injury we’re here to have checked out. We’re talking neck compression injury here, not brain trauma. Two completely different things…no, there was no blood…no, you cannot practice your stitching on us.”
If only they understood how much it would have to hurt for Triscuit to even agree to go to the hospital and how much convincing it took (as well as a phone call to his mom) to get him there. If they understood that, they’d send him into the Xray room asap.
This morning, I dropped him off at the First Canadian Place clinic. A few text messages and a phone call later, I find out that he’s given up on getting an Xray because of bureaucratic red-tape which requires him to have a doctor’s requisition and not one from a chiro. Thick-headed silly boy that he is sometimes, he walked out of the clinic because they didn’t say that they would schedule him to see a doctor. And he didn’t push back.
So now, he’s taken off the brace, gone into work and said to-hell-with-it-all and if his neck fails, then he knows something was seriously wrong with it. Otherwise, his chiro doesn’t think it’s too bad (from listening to his description over the phone) so therefore, it’s perfectly fine.
One word… IDIOT.
Why do I worry about someone who refuses to worry about himself?
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