The Band-Aid vs The Axe

Posted on 13/09/2009 by ij

I was appalled to watch some of the news video of these so-called “town hall meetings” (more like bar room brawls) that took place over the last few weeks regarding health care reform in the US. The misinformation that was being spewed was bad enough, but when I saw a commercial running on US networks featuring a “Canadian” woman suggesting that she would have died had she stayed in Canada and waited for surgery for her condition, that nearly did me in.

Sure, people die. And sometimes people die because they can’t get help fast enough. But to characterize Canadian health care as so “care-less” is nothing less than fear mongering, and the pharmaceutical and health insurance companies who were behind the campaigns in the US should be ashamed of themselves. I’m sure they’re not because it’s all about the bottom line, just as it was for those lovely Wall Street giants who brought the economy to its knees.

I’m not against business, and I’m not against “big”, but health should never be about big business. I know that’s idealistic, but you don’t see Canadians wanting to get rid of our health care system in spite of its flaws, because we know and see what happens to people in countries who don’t have it. Imagine having recovered from a life-threatening illness, only to have to face the rest of that life literally paying for it. And then imagine being deathly ill and then turned away from a hospital emergency ward because you don’t have insurance.

I was in emergency at our local hospital at about 3am the other morning. I have been there before when it has been horrendously busy and it took hours to get attention. Fortunately, what we were dealing with at the time wasn’t life-threatening, just a scare. And the other night was similar, except for the fact that it was not busy at all and we got in to see a doctor almost immediately. The only card we had to show was our health care card number, which is something every Canadian citizen automatically receives. The staff and doctors were caring and helpful, and they were patient with our questions and concerns. And in the end there was a wave goodbye, but there was no bill.

Personally, I have no vested interest in American health care and whatever the population down there chooses to do is their business. But don’t drag our system through the mud simply in order to keep your fat insurance companies booming, and to scare your population out of the idea or ideal of universal health care.

And last, but definitely not least, we each have to take responsibility for our own health. We can’t expect to be careless with our bodies and then simply walk into a hospital and say “fix me”. We know a lot more these days about the dangers of smoking or overindulgence of any kind, or what a bad diet and a lack of some form of physical activity can do to our bodies.

When we were in the hospital the other morning, a care worker came around to ask us if we would take part in a survey. She explained that the survey was taking place only on Friday and Saturday nights, because that’s when the majority of emergency patients are coming in because of the effects of alcohol or drugs. It galls me that people’s stupidity and carelessness can lead to a back up of services for those who have legitimate emergencies. And those who are seriously addicted to substances need real, long term help, which is not easy to find.

There are problems with our health care system, no question. But Canadians would rather keep it and try to fix it, than not have it at all. And as seemingly inefficient as it may be, I’ll take the band-aid over the axe any day.

My Visit With Uncle Ken

Posted on 03/09/2009 by ij

Image by Roby&C. “Back” via Flickr

My cousin called me up last week with the bad news. “Uncle Ken is dying,” she said, and we started to reflect on his life which hadn’t always been a happy one.

My 80-year-old uncle never married and suffered all his life from bipolar disorder. Of course, they didn’t have a name for it when he was young, but everyone knew that he wasn’t “right”. And even after he was diagnosed, there were times when he would go off his medication thinking that he was cured, only to have another manic episode, which meant that he would have to go back in the hospital until the medications could even him out again.

When I was a kid, my Uncle Ken was sort of the adventurous relative to my eyes. He had a little sports car, saw the world as part of the Canadian forces, bought himself a sailboat and always brought Dairy Queen soft ice cream and strawberries when he came for Sunday dinner. I saw him mostly at family functions, when he was either very quiet or passionately arguing politics with my Dad and his other siblings. The Jackson’s were a political bunch even if only from the sidelines.

When I had my two girls, Uncle Ken would send them each a beautiful little dress every Christmas. We lived in different cities, so the times I saw him were few and far between. He lived alone in the West End of Vancouver, and over time his bouts with depression, dementia and bad legs eventually lead to his being placed in a care facility. I don’t think he was all that happy with it at first, but after a time he began to get used to it.

The call last week was urgent enough that I knew I had to get there soon. He was suffering from pneumonia, choking on food and was hooked up to oxygen. My cousin told me that when she had visited, he hardly said two words the entire visit. I thought about leaving to see him right away, but I had invited a group of friends over for a barbecue as a homecoming for my husband, so I opted to wait a couple of days. Immediately I felt guilty, not knowing how long my uncle might actually have.

But within a couple of days I drove out to the ferries to make the trip to the mainland for what I knew might be a final visit.

I hadn’t seen my uncle for quite some time, and because of his dementia I wasn’t sure if he would even recognize me. They were giving him a sponge bath when I got there, so I couldn’t see him through the curtain.

Was he conscious? It seemed so. I heard him mutter something to the nurse, but it was difficult to get a sense of his condition at first. Then the nurse pulled the curtain back. He looked very thin because he had been refusing to eat, he was sitting up, hair combed and clean shaven, and there was no oxygen tube. There was a glass of beer on the bedside table, because it was the only thing he would consume. Well, I don’t exactly blame him for that! But he didn’t look nearly as bad as I was expecting.

At first he mistook me for my cousin who looks like me, but then he corrected himself and I apprehensively sat down on the end of his bed.

The conversation started out a little awkwardly at first. But we ended up having a very nice chat about a myriad of things; his life experiences, current events, the family, and he even told me where he wanted his ashes spread when he dies. We talked about Ted Kennedy’s passing, how marijuana can’t be all that bad, and he asked me about my cat, and I learned more about my uncle in that one conversation than I had in the last fifty-two years.

In the middle of our chat, a nurse popped in to say that he was being shipped back to his care home later that day. “Thank God!” he said, clearly relieved to get out of hospital and back to his own place.

He didn’t break a smile once during our conversation, but that was okay because I could sense that this was a “rally” day for him and perhaps the inevitable would be put off for a little while longer.

When I finally got up to leave after an hour-and-a-half, we clasped hands and he said with great sincerity “It was lovely to see you, lovely.” As I walked out of the hospital it occurred to me that I could easily have misjudged the timing and missed seeing him altogether. It was only luck or maybe some other force that I don’t know about, that brought me there on that particular day.

He is back in the care facility now, but we have been warned that things could take a turn again, especially if he still refuses to eat. His depression leaves him with little will to fight and his dementia has affected his swallowing reflex.

But for the moment, my old, cranky Uncle Ken is still kicking.

October 11, 2009 – Thanksgiving – My Uncle Ken passed away at 6pm, having refused food and medication completely for the past three days. I feel like he just decided it was his time to go, and I am grateful this Thanksgiving that I had that final conversation with him.
Goodbye, dear Unc. Love, Irene

End of Summer, End of an Era?

Posted on 23/08/2009 by ij

Image via Wikipedia

I am more than half way through my time off and thinking “Holy Cow, I had all this time and how much of my To Do List have I done?” This is exactly what I projected I would do. Maybe the projecting part is what did me in. I am a perpetual victim of my own expectations. Ugh.

Anyway, I am going to forgive myself and let it go. Er, well, I’ll try anyway.

It is nearing the end of summer and I sure don’t like letting summer go. Spring and summer are the months that I feel like I come alive. On the wetcoast (no, that’s not a typo), we live through months of grey and rain which to those who are not used to it, can be very depressing. Well, even those who ARE used to it get pretty grumpy after weeks of misery.

It is also nearing the end of months of wondering what is going to happen to the Little TV Station That Could.

Some of you will remember that months ago I talked about my husband being laid off from his television job of 29 years. So far, we have survived it. He has picked up some independent production work, and has spent the last month working at a television station in Vancouver just as a fill in. But the station where he used to work is going to permanently shut its doors on August 31st, which to many of us is unbelievable.

There are a group of people at work trying to save it, consisting of employees, former employees and other investors. And there is great hope that somehow it will survive, but even if it does, it’ll be a long, hard road ahead to make it viable.

Television is not what it used to be to most of us who grew up with it. Remember when there was only one TV in the house, it might still have been black and white, and when a certain show came on, the whole family would gather to watch? Most families have more than one TV these days, and nobody is watching…and when they are, it is not together as a family. Many kids growing up now were told by their parents NOT to watch TV, that it’s bad for them. So what have they migrated to? Computers and hand-held game devices. Yeah, much better!

In some ways, I don’t blame people for moving away from television. There is a LOT of crap on TV these days. Much of it is due to some know-it-all TV execs somewhere trying to lure younger people to the set, or to hang on to the “National Enquirer” types. I’m talking about the people who watch reality shows. Cookie cutter television shows abound. Once something succeeds, everybody tries to reinvent it and as a result, you get the same show over and over, but with a different name. You know, reality television has probably driven as many people away from television as it has kept others around. But I’ve already written a blog railing at reality television, so enough of that.

The one thing that many television stations have lost is the “local” aspect. Once a station gets swallowed up by a big conglomerate (this is also true for radio), these big companies do their best to get rid of anything local about it. The company that my husband worked for tried to ask the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission), to allow for LESS local programming, because they didn’t want to pay for it. It’s cheaper to run a bunch of crappy, US-bought shows than to pay local people to write, create and produce local television. But what is the point in having a local television station if there is nothing “local” about it? This is what has driven many people away from watching.

I don’t think that because a company is BIG that it has to be BAD. Unfortunately, however, it becomes easier for a big company to “streamline” certain aspects of its organization to save money, which in turn means job losses due to centralization. Centralization leads to loss of individuality…and let’s face it, people in Winnipeg don’t care what’s happening to people in Victoria unless it’s something REALLY BIG like an earthquake or an invasion of some sort! And vice versa.

Okay, it’s not that we don’t care, it’s that we would rather know more about ourselves than we would about somebody else. And that’s where, in many instances, television has lost out in the last few years.

Except for local news, many TV stations don’t have the budget or the creative minds to develop local programming. And the creative minds who used to have these ideas, have been told to do something else. Although I realize that C.S.I. and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire are far beyond what any small local television station can produce, I do believe that there is a desire by television viewers to see and hear more about themselves and their communities, and not just in a news-type show. And as a result of trying to lure younger people to the TV set, television executives have actually driven many away who were actually DEVOUT television viewers…people of my generation and older. Television was, and is, our habit. Why encourage us to turn it off?

Okay, I don’t really know anything. These are all simply my opinions and I have never run a television station. But I did work at one for eight years, my husband for 29 years, and we might soon become part owners of it. Some might say that television is dying. But they said that television would kill radio, and it didn’t, and I doubt that the internet will kill TV. However, we have to take the best parts of it and create a model that helps it to succeed. And if anyone can do it, we can.

Winter is coming, and possibly, a LOT of hard work.

Wish us luck!

Irene Jackson

From The Inside Out

Author Archives: ij

The Band-Aid vs The Axe

My Visit With Uncle Ken

End of Summer, End of an Era?