Medical differences

My dad wound up in the hospital again while we were in Canada. He has a form of blood cancer called Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) and he's undergoing chemo. He has also had a nagging cough for the last two years. He's supposed to go home between today & Thursday, depending on how he's doing. That would make a one & a half week stay.

Because he wound up with a fever of 103 degrees on the Sunday night while we were there, my sister & I took him to the ER. This time thru, I'm thinking because he's bald now, they were more perceptive about him being a cancer patient. In the past, he's had to sit there up to 6 hours (actually, he went out & sat in the car), even though he has a letter from his cancer doctor saying it's life-threatening with his immune system to be exposed to illness like in the ER.

It took about 40 minutes before they moved him from a bed in the hallway into an actual room. Then they had to perform the tests on him and check his lungs. By now, the fever was gone completely though.

This time through, the doctor on call realized that even though my dad was on antibiotics, his lungs looked worse than they had before he gone on the antibiotics. He said he wanted to keep him in the hospital and have a respirologist see him. My sister & I went home at 3:00 am.

It took until Tuesday before my dad's regular doctor checked on him in the hospital. It took until Thursday until the cancer doctor came to see him. The respirologist finally showed up on Friday, I believe. And he didn't realize my dad was a cancer patient. Apparently they don't have charts by the beds (!?!).

The respirologist discovered my dad has a lung fungus. Even though he's been in and out of the hospital for the last 2 years with these fevers & cough, this is the first time anyone checked for anything other than pneumonia.

I told my sister to make a sign that says 78 white male. CLL. On (medications). Lung Fungus.

My dad is also now getting an IV catheter that can stay in his arm for up to 3 months. That way they don't have to keep poking him every 3 or 4 days to check blood or add meds.

And I also told my sister they should get pizza or something for the nurses. In Canada, they are not paid as well, and are really overworked. When they get upset, they go on strike. Be nice to the nurses!!

Canada has socialized medicine. They can't afford to pay their medical people as well as they are paid in the States, so they loose a lot of their trained staff that way. This hospital, while really crowded in all the rooms being used, has a whole wing that's empty. There are no people to staff it.

The rooms are shared, and there's no TV or phones in the rooms. This time my dad had a window, at least. And Carolyn had left a bunch of Ellery Queen magazines for him to read short stories. He didn't care for the Sudoku book I'd gotten him, but my mom & sister play it when they go to visit.

Lee said if it was me in there, he'd figure out how to get internet connectivity and at least I could level my characters...

Carolyn said she should have left her kids' DVD player they use in the car - but he wasn't so sick while she was there.

My hospital stays with each of my 3 c-sections were a lot more comfortable, and the staff was less stressed, I think. Of course, I was on drugs for part of that, but even so, I think I prefer our system over socialized medicine. Then again, I have no clue how Medicare/Medicaid works, and maybe by the time I'm old enough to need it, it will be close to what Canada has now.

In the meantime, we're all praying now that the lung fungus is being dealt with, my dad can go thru chemo and get that done without the fevers and coughing. Chemo is plenty tough on it's own. At least he should be rested up for it?