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@Susquatch the secret is to break yourself more first, and then go in via emergency. Once seen by a doc you are on their patient list, and the wait time is much less. Kinda the hard way to do things but gets it done.
 
Mike R said:
Kinda the hard way to do things but gets it done.
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Ya...... Kinda not my style for sure...... But I hear you. When I had my stroke they did a bazzillion tests immediately that normally take years to get done. Not a good way to get full body CatScans and MRIs though.
 
ChazzC said:
all I had heard about Canada is that in order to get timely treatment you may have to travel to another Province at your own expense.
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No, that's not right. Around here, if they suspect something is seriously wrong, things move fast. I went from seeing my family doctor, to a CT scan, colonoscopy, surgical consultation and onto the operating table in 11 days for colon cancer. This was at the height of the lockdowns for covid, as well. A friend had a similar experience a year before me.

Waiting lists for knee and hip replacements are always longer than people would like. OTOH, if you are willing to fill vacant spots on 24 hours notice, it is possible to speed things up a lot.

My understanding is that the USA spends nearly twice as much per capita as other developed countries but your life expectancy is something like 3 years shorter. Our system is not perfect but I think it isn't bad by comparison.

And I'm sorry that you've had this setback even though it seems you've been very diligent about following orders and not trying to rush your recovery.

Craig
 
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Anytime I have had an urgent situation. I've been treated very promptly. Anything non urgent took forever.

I think the thing that took the most time of all was finding a family doctor. That took over 8 years - we went to health clinics till then.
 
Perspective is everything. We live in Paradise. While there are aspects of Canada and the USA that aren’t quite what we want, and some of the stuff going on right now is sketchy, my entirely uneducated guess is there are tens (or hundreds) of millions of people alive today who would give everything they have to be able to live in one of our two countries.

Nobody is walking from Guatemala to Texas without the belief (and some solid evidence) that life will be better here than their original homes. And that’s true even if they’re coming here from more developed countries such as India and China.

Best story - my ex-wife did contract work for Itochu and Marubeni, two major Japanese import/export houses. Itochu and Marubeni staff their Canadian offices with young men from Japan, who arrive here with minimal English skills. They stay here for a couple of years, learn English, and establish trade contacts with US and Canadian customers. Funny thing, probably half of them decide to stay here and not return to Japan. They defect to Canada, meet a nice Canadian, marry, and live good lives here.
 
Susquatch said:
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Anytime I have had an urgent situation. I've been treated very promptly. Anything non urgent took forever.

I think the thing that took the most time of all was finding a family doctor. That took over 8 years - we went to health clinics till then.
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Depends on what they think is "urgent." When I broke my shoulder I got into the system quickly after the ER, saw my Surgeon within a few days for more X-Rays & discussion of options, got a CT Scan within a couple of days; but then had to wait for an opening in my Surgeon's schedule: 2+ months, and he's still running that far out (a busy man). If I need to see him, I can pretty much get in within a couple of days.

[After I was assigned to him, I checked out his background and was very happy with the assignment: Eastern Virginia Medical School, Internship & Residency UVA School of Medicine (UVA is my Alma Mater), Fort Benning taking care of the Rangers, Fellowship at Columbia University, then deployed to East Africa for Enduring Freedom. In addition to treating traumatic Shoulder & Elbow injuries, he teaches at Hershey Medical Center. We have bonded due to our common backgrounds at UVA, and he probably gives me some special consideration if necessary for scheduling.]
 
Mike R said:
@Susquatch the secret is to break yourself more first, and then go in via emergency. Once seen by a doc you are on their patient list, and the wait time is much less. Kinda the hard way to do things but gets it done.
Click to expand...
Bad idea.

I had a very painful back episode and ended up at the emergency department. They injected me with so many opioids that within a minute I could barely hold my head up, broke out in a sweat that drenched me from head to toe within a minute and then I started puking. They told me this was completely normal until I got use to the opioids and that they could give me another shot to stop the vomiting. Then it got worse, they put me in the "garage" a now permanent was for overload during Covid, it's the garage where the ambulances use to park. Looks exactly like a war zone, basically a tent with about a hundred cots. You can hear and smell the ambulances that are idling on the other side of the tent fabric. Hot and one nurse for about 50 cots, I eventually flagged down a nurse and asked for water and was told they ran out of water, some sort of emergency.

The doctor eventually assigned to me was very nice, but useless.

I expected that a doctor trained in back pain would treat me, that doesn't happen there. My take on the emergency department is that they have one or maybe two doctors that do the rounds for perhaps a hundred mostly really sick people with two goals in mind:
1) try to give you some medication to relieve your symptoms and get you out the door telling you to go see your family doctor.
2) Make sure you don't die while there.

From observing the doctor go from cot to cot, they spent typically less than five minutes per patient, once per day.

This was in Ottawa at the General. Perhaps it's better elsewhere.

Very scary experience.

Best advice, stay healthy and far away from the emergency department unless you have a gunshot wound or a broken bone.
 
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slow-poke said:
Bad idea.

I had a very painful back episode and ended up at the emergency department. They injected me with so many opioids that within a minute I could barely hold my head up, broke out in a sweat that drenched me from head to toe within a minute and then I started puking. They told me this was completely normal until I got use to the opioids and that they could give me another shot to stop the vomiting. Then it got worse, they put me in the "garage" a now permanent was for overload during Covid, it's the garage where the ambulances use to park. Looks exactly like a war zone, basically a tent with about a hundred cots. You can hear and smell the ambulances that are idling on the other side of the tent fabric. Hot and one nurse for about 50 cots, I eventually flagged down a nurse and asked for water and was told they ran out of water, some sort of emergency.

The doctor eventually assigned to me was very nice, but useless.

I expected that a doctor trained in back pain would treat me, that doesn't happen there. My take on the emergency department is that they have one or maybe two doctors that do the rounds for perhaps a hundred mostly really sick people with two goals in mind:
1) try to give you some medication to relieve your symptoms and get you out the door telling you to go see your family doctor.
2) Make sure you don't die while there.

From observing the doctor go from cot to cot, they spent typically less than five minutes per patient.

This was in Ottawa at the General. Perhaps it's better elsewhere.

Very scary experience.

Best advice, stay healthy and far away from the emergency department unless you have a gunshot wound or a broken bone.
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Emergency Department (what they are now calling the ER) staff are trained to treat emergencies and get things stabilized. My contact was with Nurses and PA's (Physician Assistants): qualified people, but not with the same expertise and experience as an Orthopaedic Surgeon. Even the Radiology Techs are just generalists and don't necessarily have the expertise or experience as those assigned to clinics and don't have the same fixtures as the clinics have to keep you comfortable while in unusual positions.

When the stress fracture "popped" Friday evening my wife (Certified RN) and I made the contious decision not to go to the ED and instead used my Ortho sling to immobilize the arm. I did follow up with the on-call Ortho Resident Saturday who confirm our actions and recommended seing my Surgeon as soon as possible (and I was with him at 1:30pm Monday; as I said earlier, diagnosis & treatment quickly available, just had to travel to outlying facilities within the Med Center system).
 
ChazzC said:
but all I had heard about Canada is that in order to get timely treatment you may have to travel to another Province at your own expense
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I'm from Ontario, but I was out west and my drivers medical needed to be done. Ontario insisted I fill out the paper form they had mailed me. Alberta won't let you send mail to a post office, so I ended up using a hotel for mail. Then nobody in Alberta would fill out an out of province form. Somehow I got bounced over or back to Regina SK, one clinic said they could do it and wanted cash only, just to have the doctor refuse again and a refund. Finally found a place with Russian nurses and a doctor from the Congo who would fill out the form. It was insanity
 
Mike R said:
@Susquatch the secret is to break yourself more first, and then go in via emergency. Once seen by a doc you are on their patient list, and the wait time is much less. Kinda the hard way to do things but gets it done.
Click to expand...
I got my current Epi-Pen prescription because I went to emergency to get some crap out of my eye (unrelated to metalworking, a rotten log I was moving exploded into dust and some of it got where my eye couldn't flush it out. I was wearing my prescription glasses).

Honestly, I could (should) have gotten it sooner elsewhere but I gotta say it was really convenient since I was there anyways.
 
ChazzC said:
We called it Cargo (ammunition in my case on an AE); ballast is what you consume before heavy drinking (both to absorb some of the effects of the alcohol and also for added stability)


Always; also, lift close to your body and not overhead.
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So no higher than your pecker then?
 
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