Again this week I have to make comments about our medical system. As I have said before, most of the time all we hear are complaints of dissatisfaction with the quality or the levels of service. Often though, I do hear my friend Bob Colliar rave about the treatment he has undergone by saying "I just can't say enough positive things about the treatment I have received."
Over the last couple of weeks I have found myself in a similar position where I have needed help and the treatment I received was exemplary. I have to say the one thing I noticed was how young the specialists are getting. In the past they seemed to be old men, but now they are so young, but I guess from what my good wife tells me, that it has something to do with my age. Can you believe her making a statement like that?
No matter what, the doctors and the nurses gave me care that was of such a quality that if I were to complain it would just prove that I was extremely narcissistic. I was treated in a timely manner in Royal University Hospital where it was evident they were meeting some extreme demands yet were giving an efficient yet compassionate level of care.
I feel that I have some qualification in saying this since earlier this year, when we visited Vietnam, we saw what health care was like in a country that does not have a medicare system in place. We saw clinics where they were so limited in space that when a child was brought in for treatment the parents would have to wait outside while the medical staff took the petrified child in to try their best under extremely limiting conditions. You could see the traumatized looks on the faces of the children. These clinics were being operated by aid organizations and thank God since, if they were not, no clinic would have existed.
In this country the level of care we have become complacent about is so far ahead that it is almost impossible to even start to compare. Our daughter-in-law, who was born in Vietnam, could not at first understand why she should go to a doctor when she got pregnant. In the country of her birth very few women ever see a medical person at any time during a pregnancy or even at the birthing of the child. There is just no way they can afford such an extravagance.
Here we have levels of care and follow through folks from other parts of the world cannot even imagine and yet, our own people at times still find ways of finding fault. To them I must say it is time to quit looking through rose coloured glasses and realize we, in our public system, are blessed beyond compare and we must thank those who had the vision to set it up and chastise those who would tear it down.
To those who looked after and are continuing to follow up on my treatment I take my hat off to you and thank you for a job well done. To those business types who tear the system down just because they are not getting their finger in the pot and are ticked off because of this, I say "Take a hike, and buzz off, etcetera."
