Canadian Health Care....to hell with it...

[Verfall]

So last night my sister phones me up to ask if I can go with her to take Emmy to the ER. To sum up the weekend, Emmy was had mild congestion and sniffling Thursday afternoon. Neelie gave her triaminic and tylenol, like she's always done, and put her to bed earlier than normal. Friday morning rolls around. I babysit Emmy now, since my sister has gone to work for the family business, so she pays me to take care of Emmy. I get a call, come over etc etc, same call every morning. Five minutes later, my eyes are barely open, she calls again to see get the phone to mom, I need to take Emmy to the hospital. Apparently overnight Emmy broke out in a nasty full body rash from head to toe. First assumption is allergic reaction, so off to the hospital she goes.

First doctor is confused, prescribes some salve and a liquid medication, says come back if it gets worse. Sure enough, it gets worse. Sister phones down to her pediatrician, can't see him till Thursday, but one of the other ones in the office can see her 10 o'clock Saturday morning. Doctor looks, comes up with the assumption it's bed bugs, or scabies, or some other nonsense. Starts asking my sister hod old the house is, do they keep it clean, etc. They live in my grandmas house, the same house I grew up in as a kid, and my father and his siblings grew up in. This house defines clean. The kicker, she comes up with this assumption after she finnds out Neelie and my soon to be brother in law aren't married. To top it off she has the nerve to make the comment "if you find out what's wrong, or find a cure or something, phone me", and hands my sister he number written on a kleenex.

So back home she goes. Meanwhile Emmy's skin looks like she's a recovering burn victim. Come last night, we find out one of our family friends son may have come in contact with measles, and since Emmy and him had been in contact before this broke, Neelie deicded best get Emmy down there again. So she phones me to come with her since Mikey, my soon to bro in law, has to work really early. We get there, I go to wake her up, she rolls over and looks at me. And than my mouth dropped and I damn near cried. Her face had started to swell so bad her right eye barely opened. Well now it's rush time.

So we get her to the ER, and as we're checking a nurse walks by with our friends and their son, taking him to go into isolation because of the possible measles(you won't believe what he actually got diagnosed with), and takes one look at Emmy and practically freaks out. Thankfully, we're spared the waiting room and straight to  a room we go.

Now, Emmy is the happiest kid on the planet. Just like her mom was. For those who don't know, my sister went through over 8 surgeries in her childhood, and is now left with just about half her original skull, having lost the rest to a bizarre cancer. And yet she was still the happiest kid on the planet. Thankfully, Emmy inherited that. But the doctor's would just assume since she seemed happy, there was nothing seriously wrong. Nevermind the kid looks like a burn victim who has just gone 10 rounds with Rocky. the fact she was still so happy means there's nothing wrong. Brilliant deductions!

So the same nurse comes, takes her vitals, list of meds, etc., but doesn't ask about any family history. Nothing. She also asks if I'm the father, and than asks what my sisters last name was. Emmy's is Thom, Neelie's won't be Thom till April 26th. She than proceeds to write this on the paper, and includes the date of the wedding! Strange no?

Doctor comes in, does a routine examination, looks in her mouth(key point) and just says it's an allergic reaction. Now, I'm no doctor, but just a few google searches told me that to be sure a blood test should be done. But did he ask for one? Nope. Not even a urine test. Just make an assumption and send us on our merry way. By this point my dad shows up, and encounters the doctor in the hall. Now, after years of doctors not doing a damn thing for my sister my dad is not gonna stand for it with his grand daughter. He confronts the doctor, and asks the man, bluntly, has he done everything possible to find out what is wrong, and why are they not doing any real tests. Doctor says they aren't needed from his point of view, and he believes his diagnosis of an allergic reaction and that the meds will work to clear it. Dad says if it's any different, he'll be back.

So we finally get in with her pediatrician, since the nurse was able to get us in on emergency, and what is the first thing he does? Routine examination. What does find? The rash is on the INSIDE of he throat. Now to be fair, it may not have spread that far last night, but this was less than 7 hours later, so their should have atleast been some inkling of it starting. So first thing he does, orders a urine and blood test. Two hours later, diagnosis comes up, viral infection. Can't cure it, but atleast now we know what the hell it is. And all it took was a blood test, something I tend to get every time I go to a doctor, but when a 2 year olds face is swollen so bad she can't see properly, it's not required. So we got a couple weeks of Emmy feeling like crap, but prognosis is her immune system will beat it off, and she'll be fine.

So here we are, 4 days and 4 doctors later, and something that could have been solved with a pin prick was left to linger, and was practically ignored in some instances. Not too mention the disgusting treatment unwed mothers get. Right now Emmy looks like a red oompa loompa, but atleast my sister and the rest of us can rest easy knowing what's wrong.

I know doctors up here are often over-worked, and there are nurses shortages everywhere, but after the way I was treated, the way my sister was treated, and now Emmy, something needs to be done. To hold off on a simple procedure like a blood test for 4 days is unfathomable. How many people need to wait 3 years before they can't walk and need 100 mg's of oxycontin to function before a doctor gets him into a CT scan and finds out he's got 3 herniated discs? How many people will lose large portions of their skull because the doctor is misdiagnosing the large lump growing out of the front of her forehead as "stress?"

And to top it off, Mason, the boy with measles, guess what he was diagnosed with?

A nearly burst ear drum.

Some how, they got measles out of that.

I'm extremely frustrated right now to say the least.

[captainspud]

A lot of that sounds like pure individual laziness, though. Doctors are like all other human beings-- some of them just can't be arsed.

[Gremlin]

I'm glad she's going to be alright.  I hope she recovers quickly.

[ow_tiobe_sb]

I'm going to agree with Spud on this call.  Your miserable experience, Verfall, sounds a great deal like my wife's from several years ago, when she seemed to have a persistent case of severe eczema.  Many useless salves and caustic creams were consulted without success.  It took several weeks before anyone thought to do a biopsy, which produced inconclusive results.  She underwent months of humiliating phototherapy and enjoyed only marginal success.  Not once did either a doctor or a nurse bother to ask about possible environmental causes for her skin condition.  In August of that year, we moved out of our flat an into new lodgings.  Sara's skin improved overnight.  I contacted my former landlord to ask about killer mold, etc, and he told me they had begun to do renovations on the apartment after we moved out.  They found mold as thick and hairy as a bear pelt inside the wet walls.

Now, granted (as I hope a respectable physician such as UY will tell us), there are a great number of causes for the same or similar-looking skin conditions; moreover, not all symptoms are necessarily detectable at once, so the diagnosis of the condition itself might not be possible in a short period of time.  However, there is something to be said about hastily jumping to conclusions without consulting a decent checklist of common causes.  My wife suffered terribly for months, losing sleep and self-esteem, and now has permanent scars from her uncontrolled scratching (not to mention the biopsy they performed on part of her face).  If someone had only asked us to have our flat inspected, we could have solved this problem in half that time.

On the bright side, she's never relapsed since our move.  I hope you and your family never encounter another less than spectacular health care saga of this calibre again, V.

ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and Fop o' th' Morning

[vamp]

I guess it is harder diagnosing a child with something. I just hope you get some better luck with your docs in the future. I pray (if that is ok with you) that your niece will have a speedy recovery.

[Mr. Hamrick]

i hope she recovers quickly.

but on the brightside, isn't the health care in Canada free??

[BWPS]

I'm really sorry, I hope she's doing better.

This is why I don't go to the doctor. No wait, it costs money, that's why.

[Verfall]

A lot of that sounds like pure individual laziness, though. Doctors are like all other human beings-- some of them just can't be arsed.

The doc from last night's just lucky he didn't find my dad's size 9 boot in his arse, never seen the old man that angry before. But after all the crap that went down with Neelie, I can imagine his temperament. Funny thing, we have free health care up here, yet by the time my sister was 16 we had spent over 350 thousand dollars to try to get her well. I didn't even know that till I went to get my Uni fund and found out where it went. The Kinsmen, who do a big telethon here in Regina to help families in need of assistance, told us my dad made too much money, so they wouldn't help. None of the major foundations would give us a cent. It was actually the great people at the Royal Canadian Legion that helped us the most. My respect for war vets holds no bounds.

And you wouldn't believe the things the doctors came up with to describe my sisters problem. It took a visiting doctor from Toronto taking my sisters file to a conference in Vancouver where another doctor had actually heard of a problem like hers. The rest of the quacks around here would say things like stress. Literally. One nutjob in Saskatoon told us the giant rock hard lump growing out of my sisters forehead, it literally looked like a horn, was caused from stress. Hell, the whole mess started because she fell off her bike and hit her head, and the guy reading the xrays didn't see the skull fracture near her right temple. Of course now she walks around with 3 cave ins, literal cave ins, in her skull where the thin skull bone is, since they had to remove layers from the left to replace the entire diseased right section. Biopsies done have found this cancer in her hips, her feet, her tail bone, her forearms, literally everywhere.

But yah know, stress makes horns grow from your head.

Man I wanna punch doctor. Think I'll go visit Mondy. He's in pre-med, that's close enough.

[tommyboy]

Doctors are only human, with all that that implies.
Some are lazy, or unsympathetic, or only in it for the money.
Even the good ones can make mistakes, mis-diagnose, and just be wrong.
I have my share of stories about me and my family and the errors and delays of the medical system. I have even more stories where they got it right though, and spared me, or people I love, from excruciating agony, death or lifelong illness. And do you know what? Some of the same doctors are in both sets of stories, in the 'how could you miss that?' stories, and in the 'you saved my life/my family's life' stories too.
I think that western societies expect too much of them, hold them in an unrealistically high regard, so that when they do err or fail, it seems worse. And, obviously, the consequences of failure are much more profound and important than in almost any other job, so we cannot help but take it very personally.
I'm not saying that any of us over-react. All the tales posted here are worthy of anger, disappointment and bitterness. I've felt my share of it.
But let's try to remember that they deal with an exceptionally complex biological system that varies from case to case, that is affected by Everything In The World, and is not fully understood or documented. And day in, day out, they have to make these choices, with every patient they see. To us, our neice/mother/father/child/spouse/self is the person who needs their full attention, whose case should be not just their job, but their life's work. And the same is true of the next person through the door, and the one after that.
And they have to become desensitized to human suffering, and they have to sometimes guess, and hope that the human body's self healing systems will fill in the gaps.
And lastly, hindsight allows us to look at a sequence of events entirely differently from how they look at the start. What is now so obvious to us didn't seem that way in the emergency room, in the doctor's office. Of all the stories of family or friends I have, I can think of two where someone 'non-medical' could have, or did, spot the error. And you aren't guaranteed a happy ending then, either.
When my mother died on our sofa at home over three days in agony from a twisted intestine, peritonitis and heart failure, on day two I though she should go to hospital. I didn't insist, and at nineteen you tend not to override the opinions of doctors or parents. And even if I had insisted, I think it very likely that she would have died anyway. Maybe not, I'll never know. Could antibiotics, or surgery have saved her? Should I have insisted that my intuition and opinion be heeded? I've been wrong more times than the doctors have.  Hell, at one point I thought the pain caused by my prolapsed disc was caused by sitting on my keys. Had I insisted on my opinion and intuition then, I would not be typing this now.
My sister did save my fathers life. Or more accurately, slow down the speed at which he was dying. He had been prescribed statins, and had a very bad reaction to them (liver or kidneys shut down in 1% of people, I can't recall which, now). The doctors were oblivious and she read this on the internet and requested that he be taken off the statins. Whereupon he improved, and got another two years of dying done before he finally went. And he did not enjoy those years much. I was still very glad he lived longer, but hated watching him suffer. He often wished that he was dead.
No guaranteed happy endings.
By the time we get to the doctor or the hospital, things have already gone wrong. Maybe very very wrong. And they can't always fix it. And sometimes they can, but don't, for all the reasons we know about.
I make no excuses for laziness, greed or stupidity. Mistakes are just that, mistakes. And inevitable, though we should be able to reduce their number and mitigate the consequences in medical circumstances.
Let's try to remember that even when the 'quacks' prolong the suffering (or even cause it), it's still them, or other 'quacks' who pick up the pieces and put us back together again, eventually.
And be grateful that we live in places with infant mortality rates that are low, where our mothers survive our births, where our parents get to see their grandkids. It doesn't have to be like that. We aren't owed that by anyone. We are blessed. It doesn't feel like that in the hospital, for the fortieth time. But I think it's true, nonetheless.

[El Condor]

So sorry to hear about your poor little niece, Ver; she sounds like a real sweetie.  I'm glad, though, that it wasn't anything worse, especially given the doc's cavalier attitude.  My brother is a physician, and he's shared with me that many of his colleagues' practices make him tear his hair out.

Experience has taught me that a powerful question to ask a doctor (especially one who seems to have come to a hasty conclusion) is "What else could it be?".  The answer (or lack thereof) can tell you an awful lot.

EC