On August, 21, 2009 a story was published in the Windsor Star entitled “When something’s growing in your head.” It is a sobering tale of one womans deterioration that sadly mirrors the deterioration of timely access to health care in Canada. It is a black & white reminder that you are never too sick to wait.
What would you do? Take the next few minutes to imagine that you are acutely aware that your health is failing. Each symptom, each pain and each intuitive urging continues to remind you that time is not on your side. And yet, ridiculous as it seems, all you seem to have is time. You spend agonzing hours waiting for tests and access to care during the day while the nights seem endless while you lay awake while gruelling ‘what-if’ thoughts continue to etch away at your psyche.
Shona Holmes waited 5 weeks for the MRI that would tell her she had a lesion on her pituitary gland just below her brain. The doctors weren’t sure what to call it. Shona was told that is could be a meningioma, a pituitary adenoma, a craniopharyngioma or a Rathke’s cleft cyst. They know that several of these diagnosis point to a brain tumour, one even suggests a malignancy. Swift action at this point is a no-brainer ~ but sadly ~ also not possible. Shona was referred to two specialists. A neurologist would be available to her after seven weeks and the endocrinologist would see her in 16 weeks.
Shona packed her bags and travelled to the Mayo Clinic where she received prompt, dedicated and specialized care. Within seven days she had a diagnosis and a game plan. Armed with this information and treatment plan, she returned to Canada firmly believing that her surgery, her urgently needed surgery, would be conducted immediately. Wrong again. She was to get in line again. But she didn’t. Good for her! Shona returned to the US to have the surgery that ultimately restored her vision completely within ten days.
As Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin so brilliantly put it, “access to a waiting list is not access to health care.” This article is posted in its entirety on my website www.ihcproviders.com. I encourage you to read it and feel it. You, your child, your best friend, your parent..anyone….anyone could be, or maybe is, a “Shona”. And this must stop.
My philosphy is that you can either take action or stay silent. Ongoing complaining does not solve problems, or in this case, save lives. Everday I take action. It is my greatest pleasure to connect Canadians to international health care Centers of Excellence that are not only leaders in health care but also true heroes of caring. It works. Medical travel is no longer for the affluent. Paradigms have shifted and we now live in a world where health care excellence is sometimes down the street, other times a drive away and perhaps even at the other end of a plane ticket. There are choices, there are answers but most of all, there is care.
The saying is so true. If you don’t have your health ~ you don’t have anything.
