Dialing 9-1-1 would be a big decision, so I refrained from doing it. Ambulances are for other people, I thought. Such as victims of heart attacks, suspected strokes and car crashes. And yet, might 9-1-1 be the right idea?
My insides were in turmoil from the flu. I had a slight fever. I fell backward and bumped my butt on the floor, making a large bruise which looked in the mirror as though it might create a new trend in art if hung as a painting in a frame.
Six days passed. I ate only a few shreds of food, and I couldnB次元官网网址檛 walk; my legs folded like chunks of wet spaghetti. My son Michael consulted the help-line nurse and called 9-1-1.
B次元官网网址淲hat took you so long?B次元官网网址� a paramedic asked as he and a colleague checked vital signs and loaded me in a stretcher and carried me up the steps to the ambulance.
That was how I came to enter Victoria General Hospital, stay there for three weeks, and emerge with strengthened respect and gratitude for the public health-care system.
Respect extended to all health-care professionals, from doctors to privatized cleaning workers.
In my emergency-ward day-dreams I imagined paramedics going through medical school and hospital residence, continuing to work part-time in ambulance crews, and becoming MDs. Some nurses have already become nurse-practitioners. Will ambulance-practitioners and physiotherapist-practitioners work with doctors before year 2030?
A nurse hooked an oxygen-emitting gadget into my nose, and stuck a needle into an arm-vein to feed fluid in. Another nurse took blood for laboratory tests. A doctor asked: B次元官网网址淚f you should die, what do you want us to do? Trying to revive you is our fall-back strategy.B次元官网网址�
I wonB次元官网网址檛 disclose my answer, but the question made me think about Fluffy, my long-haired black cat friend with the tufted eartips. Fluffy was a senior cat B次元官网网址� maybe older in cat-time than I am in human-time B次元官网网址� dehydrated like me but never refreshed with intravenous.
He was alert and nimble, jumping up on a chair to be combed, reclining on the legs of a half-asleep or book-reading person, a typical contrarian cat B次元官网网址� until he fell ill with cancer and died in pain.
I postponed having Fluffy B次元官网网址減ut to sleepB次元官网网址� until it was too late, so I felt guilty about the doctorB次元官网网址檚 tough question. I visualized my remaining cat, the elderly orange coloured Persian, Simba, sharing a bed in a blended veterinary hospital and human emergency ward.
Simba would like to bask on the warm blanket which someone brought me. Pet therapy seemed to be the only healing strategy lacking in a place where all diagnostics and remedies were gathered together under one roof for same-day service: X-ray, pharmacy, laboratories, physiotherapy B次元官网网址� the works.
I benefited from all that, as I moved from emergency to beds in wards where friendly nurses identified themselves, writing their names and each dayB次元官网网址檚 activity target on whiteboards: 6 North, then 5 South, the rehabilitation place where staffers encourage patients to dress each day, take physical and mental exercise with walker gadgets and stationary bikes, preparing to return to the world.
At first I left most of my food untouched, then progressed to chowing down every crumb. Tests showed that my mainly vegetarian diet wasnB次元官网网址檛 giving me enough iron. That was one reason why I got extra-sick when the flu germ struck. We hadnB次元官网网址檛 been putting together the needed combination of vegetables.
Hence the iron in the intravenous, and iron pills after the IV came out. I hate slaughterhouses, but IB次元官网网址檓 back part time on meaty stuff, thanks to hospital food, which I found tasty.
The hospital is a good model for the preventive and healing community, but it canB次元官网网址檛 solve all our problems.
Now IB次元官网网址檓 back with cat Simba, regaining some lost muscle. Thanks, Victoria General.
gemort@pacificcoast.net
B次元官网网址擥.E. Mortimore is a Langford-based writer and a regular columnist.
