We take Canada’s glory for granted. Watch the Americans writhe over ObamaCare, a tangled scheme that doesn’t come close to finding the efficiencies of a national system, which is what the provinces try for. Ottawa unilaterally imposes a 2014 funding formula, when it should be sitting down with the premiers and having a chat.
Negotiation? Not Harper’s strength.
The only contribution we can make as citizens is to avoid visiting the doctor — as one does — to make space for the truly ill. And then things go wrong — as they do.
Here’s a snapshot of health care for gardeners, very stupid gardeners:
Any idiot can deadhead geraniums. You can snap them off with two fingers. You don’t need freshly sharpened German secateurs, which is what I had.
An American would doubtless think, “Better be careful, can’t afford the doctor’s bills if I hack a finger off.” A Canadian would think, “I should be wearing gardening gloves.” Naturally, a browning flower falls and a bolt of blood shoots into the air. The moment when you see inside your raw finger meat and feel the nail to see if you’re going to lose the thing is not great.
I know this because my husband did the same thing 10 years ago. We searched the flower bed for the fingertip, which lay alone, pale and shocked. They couldn’t reattach it and it never grew back. Also they pencilled me in as a possible suspect — I take it women frequently attack their husbands with shears — which I frankly found hurtful.
It wasn’t the pain or the daftitude that shamed me this time. It was the fear that as a short-fingered couple, we’d be a conversation piece at parties, a matching set. It would be like those gang members who tattoo a teardrop under their eye after their first murder, except of course it’s finger stumps and only weird in a boring way.
At the local walk-in clinic, I held up a red hand, feeling faint.
“Do you want me to hit you?” the doctor said.
“I’m sorry?”
“I will hit you.”
“Doctor, please don’t hit me.”
“Take a deep breath and sit down.”
She poured a clear liquid over the finger and bandaged it, chatting. “You have beautiful eyes,” she said.
Later, the emergency room at Toronto East General was strangely restful, the staff courteous and fast, no threats.
I lay on the table as Desmond Ming and Drs. DiNicolo and Moore injected anesthetic and swooped with needle and thread for what they kindly said was the most minor of injuries. “I’ve done this hundreds of times,” Ming told me.
“Ow, ow, ow,” I said. No one called me a big baby, which I am.
As I lay flat, the last stitch knotted and trimmed, Ming — whom I will now call Desmond as I still feel real close to him emotionally — began gently swabbing dried blood off my ankles.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said. “I can do that at home.”
“No, this is what we do.” A feeling of bliss — truly, I live in the land of the good and kind — overcame me as I lay there, a complete stranger having volunteered to send me onto the street looking respectable, properly shod and with the same money I came in with.
I’m not saying Desmond was being Christlike, though he was. But he was unapologetically pointlessly nice in a classic Canadian moment that I still can’t quite get over.
Think on that, ye Americans. You could have learned from us and from the prancing Brits. You could have had this scene a few million times over and you didn’t. You passed on it, and it mystifies me still.
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Mallick, Heather
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