One could weep at the topsy-turvy state of our modern world. Let me explain.
My husband has been under the care of the medical system in our fair province for the past year, undergoing an operation last fall and another one this week. Remember, under our wonderful Canadian medicare system, we citizens have no other choice than to submit to the medical personnel unless one can afford to go to another country and pay for private medical services—all the while still paying for medicare in Canada. The state refuses to emulate the best medical systems in the world, e.g., Switzerland, New Zealand, France, and allow a private system alongside the public one—in other words, give Canadians a choice.
So from my conservative point of view, a curious blend of compassion and compulsion has emerged in the caring professions in our socialist paradise. The doctors tell you as much or as little as they wish, and demand that patients treat them and their helpers with the utmost deference—reminiscent of church authorities when God reigned supreme. We are lowly penitents who must cover our heads in ashes and wait patiently for the priests to bless us when they deem suitable in their very important lives. Heaven forbid that a lowly penitent should actually ask for information!
So after my husband’s first operation last fall, the surgeon phoned me with a report of the operation. It was brief and to the point, exactly what was needed because he is a busy doctor and I neither want nor expect many minutes of his time. But I do expect to know how the operation went. Thinking this expectation reasonable, I assumed this was standard practice with surgeons in our public hospitals.
But I was wrong. So after my husband’s operation this week, which was scheduled for 7:40 am, I waited and waited for a call. I had dropped him off at the hospital at 6 am, exactly as I had done for the first operation, and returned home. My husband and I have discussed this at length and agreed there is no point in the other being at the hospital for the operation, unable to do anything to help and wasting time sitting there worrying as the minutes drag by.
By 11 am and no call, I began to worry. Finally, at noon I called the doctor’s number and his receptionist answered. My pent-up worry came rushing out in a very forceful complaint about being completely in the dark about how the operation went and even the where my husband was in the maze of a very large hospital. Well, that I had the audacity to demand information totally upset her, I later learned, and she cried for the rest of the day. Then the doctor did call and told me he expected me to be waiting outside the recovery room where he could talk to me at his convenience, intimating my wifely duty was seriously compromised because I wasn’t at the hospital throughout—again reminiscent of absolute authority but this time where the state and its public ‘servants’ take the place of an awesome God.
The next morning, the doctor told my husband that his whole team was upset by my demand for information, and threatened to withdraw their services from my husband if I didn’t apologize to his receptionist. So to recap, it’s my husband who is being operated on, but I must control my worry and panic over no news because the receptionist’s feelings are far more important than mine. My worry pales in comparison to her sensitivity to a demand—not a timid request—for information.
As I said, one could weep, but real tears would do no good in our topsy-turvy world.