A decade ago, my friend Henry and I used to dream about being where we were not. Actually, in Ottawa, anywhere else seemed attractive to us, especially in winter. One of his most pleasant memories was of visiting a friend who lived in a houseboat off of Vancouver Island. Henry would tell me about the benefits, especially as people aged, of living in a more benign climate: a better chance to exercise outside when the weather was harsh, no snow to shovel, lower electricity costs, less time and energy required just to step outside, and reduced clothing costs, because protection from the cold would be so much simpler.
Since then, Henry has gone on to what some people call a better place, but he is not in a position to enjoy it. And, in a climate that is indisputably more benign, I can now look at Canada’s paradise more closely.
I am usually grateful for everything on the other side of my window: the mountains, the ever-changing and impressive clouds, the generally comfortable temperatures. It has become much easier for me to be grateful for conditions here than it was in Ottawa. Seeing the lives of other people and hearing about the natural disasters that hit other places makes me feel churlish when I have an impulse to complain about any of my own trivial problems.
Yet, as Thomas Carlyle pointed out almost two centuries ago, all progress begins with a headache. There is no improvement until somebody confronts a problem and sets out to find a solution.
Which brings me to the medical system in British Columbia.
Without a local family doctor, both Catherine and I used walk-in clinics when we moved to Kelowna whenever we felt the need. Because her needs proved to be more urgent than mine, she found a doctor before I did; I was finally able to see a doctor just over a week ago.
Months before that, I asked one of the clinic doctors why it was so hard to find a general medical practitioner. He winked through his years of experience and, as if he had rehearsed his answer, said without hesitation, “Because the system is broken.”
Visiting Kelowna General Hospital more times than we can remember, we have had more occasion to deal with the medical system in British Columbia than we ever wanted. Luckily, the hospital is only a few blocks from our home, and the level of care has generally been exemplary. But unluckily, with Catherine’s unusual and unpredictable condition, we have had to cope with administrative delays, oversights, and mistakes.
Catherine was told about Charcot foot early in the year, and her right foot has been in a cast since June 5. After graduating from a wheelchair, she zoomed along on a knee scooter, and then she was able to use a four-wheel walker. But nothing beats walking, or even hobbling, unaided.
She is eager to wear shoes again, though it is likely that one of them will be a boxy therapeutic aid. We have gone for x-rays and visited orthopedic surgeons a number of times, and the people at the high-risk foot clinic referred her to a doctor in the hospital’s rehab clinic, who would be able to tell her when to get fitted for shoes.
The appointment was scheduled for early next week. Then it was postponed by two weeks, and now it has been rescheduled for another week after that. In the meantime, she uses the walker, sometimes abandoning it and clomping along for short distances.
Yesterday, when she learned about the latest delay, she wanted an earlier appointment, so she called the hospital clinic where her most recent surgeon works. She was scheduled to see him at the end of this month. The call was passed around from one person to another until somebody finally located her name, but then they couldn’t find any trace of an appointment.
It reminded me of the times I would sit in a university class while the grass was being cut outside the window and the professor would have to wait for the sound to recede before he could continue, as if the grounds staff were contending for supremacy against the teaching staff. Here the administrative people were pretending that there was no validity to the plans of the medical staff.
People outside Canada sometimes act as if this country has a single medical system. Far from it. Each province does its own funding and runs things in its own way. People pay for the Ontario Health Insurance Plan once a year, when they pay their taxes. In British Columbia, there is a monthly payment plus a deductible for prescriptions. It must be exceeded before the provincial plan pays anything. Far fewer services are covered by the province here than in Ontario, to the extent that I estimate our medical costs between four and five times greater here than they would have been there. On top of that, medical help seems far less accessible here.
In other words, we are paying more for fewer, less timely services. William Butler Yeats could have been thinking of this province when he wrote “That is no country for old men.”
But that was just Carlyle’s headache. We wouldn’t think of going back.
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