Hell by default

I would highly recommend to anyone who wants to live a happy and care free life to never look at the Canadian medical system. Shocked? Let me explain.

Sure we have universal medicare and I am all for that. I think paying a bit more in taxes and having a great medical system that is accessible by all is really beneficial. But this is not what we have.

Instead, we have a bloated, outdated system that is causing immense amounts of harm.

The best way to explain this might be for me to give examples. These examples are from my experiences and are likely not as horrific as many. In fact I have heard so many these days I could fill pages and pages with third party examples (the breast cancer scandal is a simple but huge example). People are dying due to incompetence not their illness.

Take one of my sons for one example. He throws up at least once a day and this is slowly causing long term damage to his digestive system. Remember how yucky it feels to have your stomach contents pulled back up through your throat last time you drank too much or had food poisoning? Now imagine if this was part of your daily routine? Except it is not a scheduled event so it occurs when you are shopping, watching TV, traveling in the car, speaking to someone or simply trying to eat your dinner. It usually means a complete change of clothes, a shower and floor/furniture clean up.
Having seen multiple specialists at Children's Hospital none were yet to diagnose the issue. Some said it was normal (hello?) and some wanted to do tests which involved my son drinking either strawberry or chocolate milk and laying on a cold bench very still. Ah.... Perhaps we can review the typical behavior of an autistic child... my son throws up on normal milk. What do you think he is going to do if you try chocolate or strawberry? It won't get past his lips.

Children's Hospital is so much better than all other hospitals in the Vancouver area (I don't even consider going to others) but they lost our son's records and called us the other day saying they found his info and wanted to continue testing (6 months later). How can you lose a file???

Another example is of a 18 year old autistic child who was put in a home. They complained that he was having behavior problems. When investigated it was discovered that he could not talk but had perfect sign language. Do you think anyone in the home could sign? Nope. What the hell? So, you are taking a disabled child and putting him into a situation where he can not communicate. This is like taking you and getting you permanently drunk, duck taping your mouth and dropping you in Germany (assuming you don't speak German). How fun would that be?

If you have a child or family member who needs medical treatment please know that you are going to be dismissed and forgotten unless you fight tooth and nail for help.

For their sake don't assume the system will take care of them. Be aggressive and don't take no for an answer.