We had one unwritten rule on the sports desk when I joined the spanking-new National Post 10 years ago: You don’t phone in sick, even if you are sick.
Our small sports “team” – drafted by Conrad Black’s head hunters – bonded quickly by sharing cough medicines, throat lozenges, Aspirins, Tylenols, Kleenex, soup and sympathies.
Our Toronto workspace often smelled liked Halls, Ricola and Vicks, but nobody missed a shift. We naively believed that extra dedication would make us lifelong employees, which just proved how little we knew about bottom lines, two-way loyalty and ownership changes.
On the heels of the worst snowstorm to hit Hogtown since 1871, our crew started showing up to work with nasty flus. While the Post’s token Westerner never caught the Maple Leaf or Raptors’ bug during that wild stint, I did catch the awful flu bug.
Phoned every doctor’s office in The Big Smoke only to discover I had to wait four freakin’ days to see anyone. On appointment day I received a box from home loaded with winter clothing. And, as fate would have it, slashed my finger with a knife while opening the care package.
So, hacking up a lung and dripping blood, I strolled into the doctor’s office. After a 90-minute wait, the dude in the white coat said I could only have one health issue addressed per visit.
When I insisted “both” needed care – because non-stop bleeding might eventually render my bug-free body useless – he told me to quickly pick one and leave.
Left that office totally appalled – and still bleeding – at how “the system works” (wink, wink). Later that night at work, we shared medical horror stories and were amazed that Canadians continue to tolerate and pay for this deplorable level of “service.”
Which brings me, somehow, to the local doctor who decided last week to administer H1N1 flu shots to Abbotsford Heat players.
You see, the doctor made a judgment call to actually help patients, despite breaking political/public health guidelines to do so. Imagine that conflict.
He analyzed the Heat’s situation and determined the young athletes who travel coast-to-coast and interact with at-risk groups in the community, needed the shots. If anything, he erred on the side of their safety.
Faster than you can say “goodbye swine flu,” you had reporters, politicians and citizens calling for the doctor’s dismissal and demanding heads to roll in the Fraser Health Authority.
Yet nary a word was uttered about Olympic torchbearers and politicians jumping the so-called flu shot queue. Why is that?
I wonder where those “outraged people” were last week when B.C. NDP leader Carole James toured Mission?
During her visit, we heard from a respected nurse at Mission Memorial Hospital who recently broke her arm. She got immediate attention in Mission but had to go to Abbotsford for care, where she sat in the ER for several hours before being sent home untreated for three days.
Should that be acceptable “health care” in the so-called Greatest Place on Earth?
If you really want heads to roll, shouldn’t we look at our federal and provincial health ministers and those people paid to ensure health care actually works?
Should we not be concerned about those doctors who seem more interested in charging patients than treating them?
And should we not praise those who excel in their tough jobs and make the wellbeing of patients their top priority?
While we can’t have rogue physicians who shun all direction from the top, I would have loved to have had the Heat’s doctor in Toronto when yours truly was coughing and bleeding while being lectured about “rules” of the dysfunctional system.
Is it unfair, as an occasional user of the system but regular payer, to expect “health care” when needed?
Just asking.
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