As many people my know, the health-care system in differs from one country to another, but there's one thing that never ceases to amaze me about the Canadian health-care system (particularly in Waterloo Region, Ontario). Of all the dumb things I've ever heard of or seen in a hospital, this by far has got to be the single most outrageous moment I've ever seen in a Canadian hospital. Here goes.
So I walk into the hospital, although I don't remember why I was there. I sit down at the Triage desk for the nurse and get asked which medications that I'm on. I tell the nurse "I'm on Norvir 100mg once daily, plus these", and proceed to hand her a grocery bag with the other 9 other pill bottles (with the prescription labels on them). Of all the medications that the nurse looked through, there was one that she couldn't seem to figure out what it was for. What's more shocking is that she read both sides of the bottle and asked me what the Prezista was for. Let me give you a visual example of why I say that some people in our health-care system do not belong there. I still can't believe she was so f***ing clueless on as to which medications I was on. See the image below to see exactly what she was looking at.
Can someone please explain to me how in the hell looking at a pill bottle like this you can possibly not know what the medication is for? I mean seriously, do they have to spell it out any more clearly than the drug company already has on the bottle? They don't just list what it's for, but they specify which of the 3 main categories of these medications that they fall under. (Well… technically if you count Interfuron, which is in its own category because it's the only one you inject yourself with, it makes 4 categories, but that's besides the point). I mean seriously… Is this what our health-care system has come down to?
If triage nurses can't even read a f***ing label on a bottle to figure out what they're for, then I'm not so sure that they're all that qualified to be in the health-care profession. Then again, most of the people in the health-care profession in Waterloo Region have made it very clear to me by their actions that the only reason for being in the job was because of the pay cheque. Why is it that to get proper health-care by a team of dedicated PROFESSIONALS who actually care about what they're doing and the people they're working with, one would have to drive about an hour outside of town to the small town of Simcoe, Ontario (Norfolk County) to receive competent health-care?
I mean seriously! If it were a life threatening emergency, after something like that, I'm not sure I'd want to go back to such a place. What's worse is that you can't really complain about the health-care in Waterloo Region because all of the big-wigs have "better" and "more important" things to deal with and won't bother to give you the time of day until you get a lawyer involved and cry malpractice, human rights violations, and gross incompetence. Is this seriously what my tax dollars have gone to fund?! It doesn't stop there though.
On a previous visit, I was outraged by the fact that I walked into the supposed "Cardiac" hospital experiencing classic symptoms of a Cardiac Arrhythmia, complaining about chest pains and I get sent to "minor treatment". It wasn't until I told the nurse that something felt very wrong to me, suddenly clenched my chest as the chest pain set in even further and I damn near doubled over in pain having trouble breathing in what felt like a heart attack that the nurses would do anything. From there it only gets worse.
The stupid CUT of a nurse tried getting blood from me to run some tests to determine what was going on. Now understand, being HIV+ for 2 years now, I've gotten quite used to getting stabbed with something in the arm at least once a month, so I'm quite familiar with discovering right away who can and who can't draw blood. I have never as far as I can recall ever had an experience so painful and horrid in my whole life. I actually started screaming in agony as she stabbed me BESIDE the f**ing vein, and tried to prod around my arm trying to find the vein. Once I managed to push the damn thing back out of my arm, she just looked at me, threw a cotton ball at me and told me to deal with it myself. By this point, I was most uncomfortable doing anything further with her because quite honestly, I'd rather take a bullet to the brain than get stabbed by her again. She began insisting that I give her my arm again, and tried to force me to go through with it, without giving me the chance to calm myself down again. She's just lucky that I didn't smash her face in, because believe me... The thought crossed my mind.
It still doesn't stop there though. When I started making a scene because I was going to have absolutely NO part of that dumb twit having anything to do with me, they refused to allow me to speak with the director of patient care until they were conveniently "gone for the day". I suspect this was only because they knew that they were going to get into BIG trouble if they found out what had just happened. After almost a half hour of screaming at them at the top of my lungs, calling them every name in the book that came to mind at the time, they finally brought out the charge nurse. To make things worse, the charge nurse completely dismissed my issue, without even looking into it to fully find out what had happened, stating that "it's not like her to be like that, so I don't know why she would have done that", and left it at that.
So my next step was to finally tell them that if I was going to die, I'd rather do it at home where I could do it with dignity, pulled the leads off the heart monitor, told them to go f*** themselves, and walked out of the hospital, giving the charge nurse the "1-finger salute" as I called her a complete cu*t. I spoke with what was supposedly the vice-president of that hospital (St. Mary's Hospital in Kitchener, Ontario BTW), who assured me that he would investigate the situation and get to the bottom of it, and ever since will not answer the phone, won't return my voice messages, faxes, registered mail, or emails, figuring that I'd just go away like nothing ever happened. The sad thing is, it's not the first issue I've had with this hospital either.
How the hell is it that even the government officials in the area deem that this kind of health-care system is acceptable? I would seem to think that when someone lays down a serious complaint (which goes on a lot longer than this rant) about the shtty state of the health-care system would get addressed. Something about a patient who would rather die at home or otherwise drive an hour out of town to Norfolk General Hospital in Simcoe, Ontario (Norfolk County) to receive top notch health-care services would be something that you would think the government would want to address. Or perhaps the fact that the longest I've ever taken at Norfolk General Hospital was 4 hours from the time I parked the car to the time I was starting it back up again. The 4 hour wait I may add was ONLY because right after I arrived, 4 ambulances rolled in one after the other with patients in critical condition, which really in Canadian standards is still an impressive processing time. Perhaps these government officials need to be on the receiving end of this bullsht, or maybe even have to experience the average of 12.2 HOURS just in the waiting room to see the doctor before they'll stand up and take notice that there's a problem in Waterloo Region.
Any suggestions on how to make these f***ing retards stand up and take notice that there's a problem?
