Doctor, Doctor

     In Canada we have a universal health care system. It's not perfect but it's mainly there when you need it, when anybody needs it.  I've had medical emergencies in my life and I received excellent free hospital care as well as surgery.  In reality my life would not exist had these services been absent or difficult to access. My one and only son may not have made it into the world either.

     BUT.... ah yes it seems there's always a "but" to attach to everything, even good things .... there are glitches.  There is misuse, by patients and doctors alike.  We are told that we should never go to emergency at the hospital unless our situation is truly an emergency - like a broken bone, appendicitis, something obvious.  Emergency is costly they say, more costly to the system than a visit to the doctor (why I wonder), and you can tie up valuable doctor time when you arrive at the emergency room with something like a bad belly ache, a skin rash, a raw throat, etc. On the other hand, there are things that crop up that cannot wait 1 to 3 weeks, or more, until you can get an appointment with your family doctor, or any doctor for that matter.

     I recently came up with a skin rash (or insect bite, boil, pimple, or worse case scenario, shingles, skin cancer...you know how your mind works when you have an unknown medical occurrence happening).  If you have been a blog reader of mine for awhile you will have read, "An Alien in My Head" published last December, so you will understand why having an unknown 1/4 inch round puffy brown spot with a small white dot in its centre appear on my chin would set off my internal medical alert button (no pain or itch, a little tickle now and then). Once again I felt nothing bite me. I had been working in the garden. It was very hot out and my face had been dripping with sweat.  So there I was, sitting at the picnic table with husband and friends, completely unaware of my blotch, and husband says, "You have something on your chin." I attempted to rub it off, nope; I went in and tried to wash it off, nope. Well, we had company so I managed to ignore it for the remainder of the evening.

     Next day I'm thinking, I wonder what it is? Maybe I should get it checked out, But I don't want to go to emergency... Yet when I had shingles a few years back I was made aware that some things turn out better when treated right away - what to do, what to do?..  I called my family doctor's assistant, explained what was up and how I felt about it, said do you think I need to get it checked out???  She said it was up to me, a judgement call so to speak, but my doctor happened to have a cancellation that afternoon at 3:00.  Okay, I said, I'll come in.

     Now I am a country dweller. I live smack-dab-in-the-middle of 4 towns, towns not cities. No matter which way I drive it's pretty well 70 km one way. So a trip to town uses both fuel and time, neither of which I'm fond of spending.  I arrived at my appointment and here's how my doctor relieved my concerns.

     "Hmmm," he said leaning in for a closer look, "a skin lesion. Is there any particular time when you are not available to come in?"

     "No," I said, "pretty well any time is good for me. Why?"  The doctor went out of the examination room, came back with a card on which was written an appointment with another doctor, same clinic, in 16 days.  This other doctor, he said, was the clinics skin specialist.

     "What should I do in the meantime," I said.

     "Stay out of the sun," he said. That was not exactly comforting. That was Thursday. So I went home, used aloe vera on the blotch, my own fall back treatment, and continued to worry about what it was. Looking up skin problems on the internet in no way made me more comfortable. I was not pleased. That doctor was paid for a do nothing appointment; I had spent all that time and gas and had no diagnosis or treatment. Maybe I should have gone to emergency!

     A friend of mine said there was a walk-in-clinic in another one of those 4 communities equidistant from my home, that I should phone and see if I could get in, so Monday I called, got an appointment that afternoon.  This clinic was super efficient. I was in and out in no time flat, saw a doctor and actually discussed what was happening (he felt it was an insect bite), was given a prescription for a steroidal ointment (which, by the way, my seniors' Blue Cross plan did not cover) and was home in record time. Now it's Monday. It's been a week since I began to use the ointment and the blotch seems to be slowly going away.  Information sheet in the ointment package said it could take as long as 2 weeks. Doctor at the walk-in-clinic said check back in a week if no improvement.  I still have an appointment with that skin specialist so will go if I need to.  But, in the meantime, I feel like I'm at least trying to treat the blotch, whatever it may be, and that the walk-in-clinic was a thousand times more efficient and  satisfying than the "Hmm" I received on my first appointment.

      Non-emergency medical occurrences (which need diagnosis, treatment, prescriptions) happen all the time. We do have access to the Health-Link line, but the nurse that answers your call cannot see you, responds according to your description of your symptoms, which may or may not be accurate, clear or helpful. With one rather exciting exception*, whenever I've called the line I've been told I should go see my doctor!

     Surely, if we are not supposed to use emergency rooms as if they were walk-in-clinics then we should have access to walk-in-clinics in these smaller communities. Not every medical occurrence can wait. It may go  away, becomes more serious, or kill you. If a separate clinic is too costly to provide in a smaller community, why couldn't one doctor be designated to take walk-ins at the hospital without making us feel guilty for using emergency services? Or maybe a nurse could take these cases.  They have a great deal of training as well, and could refer the patient to the doctor on call if he/she felt it was necessary. (I suppose that idea is not feasible due to that ugliest of words in society today - liability.)

     The internet is not the answer. We need better medical services for non-life threatening medical issues. It may be better, or worse, in large cities, but it can be frustrating, worrisome and time consuming for rural and small town inhabitants.


*That exciting exception happened when I was doused completely with gasoline due to a broken tank valve. I was told to call poison control. They told me, a memory - not an exact account - to get under a cool shower right away for at least 20 minutes, eyes and all. I was ever so glad to talk to someone at that time, the Help-Link line most certainly has its place and can be very useful and calming in a frightening situation.

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Mysterious Critter Nest

This is (was) my clothepin bag. For the past couple of weeks every time I've gone outside to hang clothes on the line I've found my pins buried in sticks.  The bag hangs about 3 or 3 1/2 feet off the ground.  One day I removed all the sticks, tossed them on the ground but left my clothes carrying bag hung near-by, planning to retrieve the clothes that day as soon as they were dry. I didn't get there till the next day and there they were, all the sticks, in my carry bag. So, once again I dumped the sticks.  This has continued to happen often enough to become a pain in the you know what, so I decided to remove all my clothes pins, put them in a closed bag, and I've left this critter home as is to wait and see if it actually gets used. The whole thing seems odd to me because my clothes line is a high traffic area in the summer and the bag is so near the ground.

Does anyone know what bird or critter would build such a nest?

Beautiful Rhubarb

   

     It's been over a month since I've written a word beyond FaceBook comments.  I admit I succumbed to a favourite past-time, reading, in between energetic bouts of gardening.  A site called bookbub.com has aided and abetted this inclination by offering, on a daily basis, free or very inexpensive e-books and I have been taking advantage. The driest spring and early summer I can remember has added additional work to my gardening, necessitating watering, something we, in the past, rarely had to do. This year, had we not watered, much of our garden would still reside as non-germinated seeds in the ground.  Our well is not sufficient to accomplish this task, but we have a wee lake (pond, slough, beaver dam, water hole) on our farm so we drop in a pump and move a sprinkler wherever it's needed - mainly the vegetable garden. The berry garden has deep roots, and the lawn, well we watered it some but it's suffering. Crops in the area look poor. The canola fields especially are very spotty, many farmers are already calculating severe losses. Hay crops are doing better, perfect weather for haying, but yields are far less than usual. Cereal crops, not dependant on the length of the stem, have a better chance should the rain ever come. But there's one high yielder that seems to survive and thrive through almost any conditions thrown at it - rhubarb.

     Yes, rhubarb, beautiful rhubarb. I know a few people who actually like it so much they'll chew on a stalk, but I'm of the variety that requires additional sweetness to enjoy this prolific plant's bounty.  I have recipes galore for rhubarb based goodies - cakes, crisps, jams, preserves, wine - but my favourite is juice, and that's how I make the greatest use of the two plants I have in my berry garden. I pick, chop, wash, steam out the juice, add sugar (1 cup per litre) and heat, put in clean jars and process in a pressure canner for 5 minutes at 5 pounds.  The result is a concentrate to which I add water to taste when I pull a jar out of the cellar as the seasons roll by. Then, just in time, when the juice is gone, the rhubarb plant emerges from the ground, an early harbinger of spring, and grows so fast I'm always surprised it's ready to use once again.

The Gathering of the Clans

Rangeton Park Farmers' Day Festival

The Gathering of the Clans

 (What Music Festivals are all about!)

In days gone by we lived in tribes
Depended on our band.
We gathered food and followed herds
Living off the land.

But every year the elders stood
And said, "The time has come!"
Then o'er the land came rising sound,
The beating of the drums.

Then began a vast migration
O'er mountains, prairies, arid lands,
To the Valley of Three Rivers
For the gathering of the clans.

They made their camps, prepared a feast,
Traded, bartered, shared some tales,
Met old friends, discovered lovers,
Danced to drumbeats 'til night paled.

Times have changed. We live in cities
Or country homes with fences 'round.
But deep within, ancestral memories
Stir a quest for tribal sounds.

So begins a vast migration
O'er mountains, prairies, arid lands,
To camp amidst the sounds of summer
At a gathering of the clans.

We make our camps, prepare a feast,
Trade and barter, share some tales
Meet old friends, discover lovers,
Dance to drumbeats 'til night pales.

Our present links us to our past,
We've not changed much after all
With chosen tribe and gathering place
We answer when the drumbeats call.

A Breath of Fresh Air

This bit of paper was part of the packing in a box coming from Lee Valley.

Good for them!!!

We need more companies and more people to care as they do.

Good Cops, Bad Cops

Shoot first and ask questions later, it almost seems like that's the pattern of 21st century policing. Oh, but that's in the States, isn't it? They're getting tons of negative media attention these days. Canadian police forces are much better - aren't they?  Hmmm. What about the man in the Vancouver airport who spoke no English and was acting in an agitated manner. Weren't there a sufficient number of police present to bring him down without resorting to the excessive use of tasers which resulted in his death? What of the returned soldier with PTSD who was shot when he approached police carrying, not wielding, a hatchet (he had been chopping wood)?  What about the way college students, protesting tuition hikes, were treated in Quebec? What about racial profiling?

True, we hear fewer horror stories up here in the north, but our population is a great deal smaller as well.  There are probably fewer police/citizen confrontations due to less crime, less poverty, a different racial mix, fewer mass protests, and fewer mega-cities. That doesn't mean our police forces are never subject to violent out-of-control situations, or, when confronted with these situations, that they act completely differently than their US counterparts. Improper police actions may well be a result of fear, perhaps rightly so - fear for their own lives, possibly for the lives of bystanders. Policemen and women are, after all, not all ninjas, bodybuilders, sharpshooters and psychologists. They may not be as well trained as they should be. Or maybe it's like all us folks who take first aide courses at the workplace.  Good information, with no opportunity to practice, can easily be forgotten, and no one really knows how they will respond in a life threatening situation until they find themselves in one.

I have a theory founded only on my own observations, no facts, dates, references, just an idea of mine.  I think police brutality is linked to television.  I watch lots of Netflix, lots of police detective series, and I've noticed a vast difference between most of the series produced in the States and those produced in Britain and Canada. There's graphic violence, rampant killing, insane car chases, corruption, and seemingly unlimited police power on the American shows. There's smart, socially minded neighborhood cops with billy clubs, no guns, on the British shows. And then there's helpful, respectful Canadian police forces portrayed on CBC sponsored shows.

Violence has become embedded in our television and movies. We are not spared one single gruesome detail. We routinely watch violent criminals beat the living hell out of their competition and traitors among their ranks. We watch equally violent police forces beat the hell out of suspected criminals to obtain information or while arresting them. We watch insane car chases leaving absolute mayhem in their wake and never think about the destruction of property or resultant death and/or maiming of those unfortunate folks who happen to get in the way. We watch assassins, police brutality, murder, gang killings, war crimes - all in high definition so we won't miss a single detail.  If this violence was a normal part of our daily lives we'd freak out, but on the screen we seem to be immune to it all. That doesn't mean it has no effect on our subconscious mind. Maybe Canadians are watching too much American TV! Does TV reflect society or form it? Like they say, what comes first, the chicken or the egg?

Are police forces being influenced by the attitudes and methods on TV?  Do they want to be the all powerful "good guys" wielding unlimited resources to catch the low life "scum bags". Are they recruiting people with control issues into their ranks? Continuous media bombardment is teaching the public to accept police brutality as normal. But we need to realize that the "good cops" are still out there.

TV is make believe. The amazing feats of the crime scene investigators, the DNA tests, the nearly magical conclusions drawn from little bits of fibre, hair, blood spatter - this all makes for good TV but in reality resources like that are very costly, slow to access, and likely limited to major cases. Policing is mostly routine. It's the non-routine exceptions that rise to become sensational news. The Canadian public and the police need to rekindle and re-earn that respect we once had for one another. If we are stopped on the highway for, let's say, a taillight out, we should expect to be greeted by a polite, respectful police officer - not someone with a "bad ass" attitude or a chip on his shoulder. And we in turn should treat our police with respect. It's a hard job, sometimes dangerous, sometimes boring, sometimes rewarding, sometimes not so much. It may be an outdated and naive idea, but wouldn't it be nice if we could bring back that kind, helpful policeman we learned about when we were kids? You know, the ones teachers taught us about in that social studies unit on community helpers...







 

Gliding Along on the Mainstream

     News, by definition, is information, facts or details reported in the media about something that has happened or will soon happen. In the best of all possible worlds news broadcasters would bring us all sides of the story, but this is rare.  Biased information, which assumes agreement or attempts to sway the viewer's opinion to match the opinion of the broadcaster (its management and/or sponsors) is pretty much the norm.  Reported events may be true, partially true, misleading or even false. It's quite possible to watch the news every night and still remain uninformed.  (If you've been reading my blog you know this is not the first time I've ranted on this subject - see "A Twist on Words", February 12, 2015.)

     The closer to home the news is, the more accurate it is likely to be.  Happenings in the city the news is broadcast from and in the regions the station serves are easily verifiable and bias is somewhat easy to recognize. Provincial news may show more bias but again a thinking person can often see through it.  Move into the national politics and things get fuzzier. Our majority government has way more control than I'd like to see, a bottomless purse to spread its views to the public it "serves", and to campaign for re-election in the guise of taxpayer funded "public service" ads. Head out of the nation to international news...well here's where bias is rampant, probably on nearly every news source you could possibly access.

     On Canadian TV there are some in-depth investigative programs but people are busy. If they take the time to watch the news at all, an hour a night is about all the time they are willing or able to spare.   It takes time and caring to search out other news sources in order to obtain a broader view. Canadian TV news should get a medal though, compared to the TV news programs in the U.S. The USA, in my opinion, has become so insular that they barely realize the rest of the world exists, and, when they do take note what comes out is slanted (censored?) to such a high degree that they are still basically uninformed.  US policy makers appear to pick their enemies for monetary rather than ideological reasons.  Their economy is based on war and would suffer greatly should they begin to pull their ever expanding web of troops, war machines, weapons, drones, advisors, and covert agencies out of the many, many countries where they now exert their influence.  But their citizens have enough problems at home, no time or energy to worry about the involvement of their country elsewhere. (U.S. blog readers feel free to chime in here.)

     But wait!  Our national Conservative government is in lock-step with the U.S.! Their enemies are our enemies; their international policies are reflected in ours. Canada was once a neutral nation. We sent peacekeepers overseas, not soldiers.  We maintained our right to a viewpoint independent of our stronger neighbor.  What happened?  The Conservative majority government happened.

     Nearly the entire middle-east is at war. There's Shia versus Sunni conflicts (the historic background of the Sunni–Shia split lies in the schism that occurred when the Islamic prophet Muhammad died in the year 632AD.- see Wikipedia). ISIS is gobbling territory and killing unbelievers. People in any country are labelled as "infidels" and become subject to terrorist attack.  We seem to be reinventing the Cold War with Russia. The U.S. has finally changed its view on Cuba but has now hung the terrorist tag onto Venezuela.  A continuing positive relationship with Israel is becoming more and more difficult due to their conflict with the Palestinians.  And so on...  It is often very difficult to figure out who is right and who is wrong, and sometimes there is merit on both sides. Is it necessary for Canada to choose sides?  War crimes or genocides committed by any nation or faction within a nation should not be ignored, but is it our right to unilaterally police the world? Aren't there non-military humanitarian actions Canada could partake in that would maintain our neutrality?

     Citizens of "democratic" countries should not assume that they are entitled to a free ride.  Before we blithely agree with the actions of our government, either actively or by apathy, we should make an attempt to be informed. While your attention glides along the mainstream laws can be passed right under your nose, and you will wonder how in the world they came about.  The recent law passed in Indiana underscores how "fringe groups can mobilize resources, dominate the debate and help pass draconian and discriminatory laws in democratic countries."  (Rafia Zakaria, April 2, 2015, Al Jazeera America, @rafiazakaria)

     Your evening news is not enough, it's only part of the picture. There is an internet site called livestation.com (stations like Al Jazeera, BBC, RT America, CCTV-China, etc.) where you can access a broad scope of TV news media presented in English (some at a small charge and some free) that will at the very least present another viewpoint of events outside (and sometimes inside) of Canada as seen by people from other parts of the world.  Yes, they too probably have a bias, but hearing another viewpoint will broaden your mind and help you to realize that not everyone sees things the way we do.  We are not always right.  No one is.  You can also get numerous news sites, TV and newspapers, streaming through your FaceBook account simply by going to their web page and "liking" them or you can get news delivered to your e-mail box. If you want a broader view it may be better to divide your news watching time between mainstream news and the internet.  Then try hard to eliminate your own bias (you know you're not free of bias don't you?) and obvious quackery while forming your opinions.  It's better to be part of an educated electorate (VOTE!) than to blindly glide along assuming all is well and good with your government.