Canadian Health Care

Sorry Rinna, I misunderstood.  I agree with you about -5.  I can even take -10, but after that.....it is tooo cold!!  For most of us here, winter is our hibernation period.  We tend not to go out as much.  I try to go out for walks anyway, but sometimes, I just walk 5 minutes, and I go back home!

Barbe....where are you?? 

Okay, this is the story of the "Gish Guy".

We stopped a car for erratic driving late one night. He was on the Don Valley Parkway in the north east part of Toronto. When we approached his car we saw that he had open beer bottles in his car. He was geeky looking and very sad. He was polite as we locked up his car and took him back to the scout car (cruiser actually means motorcycle, but it's mis-used all the time to mean police car). 

He sat meekly in the back as we started to drive to the station in downtown Toronto to give him a breathalizer test. My partner and I chatted away and at one point I wondered if it seemed rude to the guy as his life was probably about to change.

As we drove down the parkway, we started to hear a moaning. This was in the days when there was a heavy wire grill separating the back seats (there is now plexiglass and I understand why!). Suddenly the guy started to bang his head on the grill!! VERY, very hard! He grabbed the grill with his hands and I started to bang on his hands to get his attention to make him. stop! 

We called in on the radio that we were going to continue to St. Josephs hospital instead of the station as our guy seemed to be having emotional issues. You could hear him screaming over the radio we found out later. 

He just kept banging and banging his head. We had blood sprayed all over the back of our shirts. Finally as we got to the hospital he rested his head on the back of the seat and let the blood run down his face. He looked dead with his forehead all torn up.

We pulled into the ER and went in and asked for a stretcher with straps and some big men. A nurse came out to see the guy. She asked me what happened and I started by saying we stopped him for a traffic violation...and she said "And you did THAT to him!!!" Duh. I said, no he did that to himself!

A couple guys came out with a wheelchair and we said we really think you need a stretcher with restraints. They said they knew what they were doing. My partner and I stepped back and waited. They got the guy into the wheelchair and just inside the hospital he started to scream again! We ran in and helped them restrain him with the huge straps they use. He broke one of them and there was a bit of a panic. They finally had 7 restraints on him. It had taken 6 of us holding him down.

We left and went to a coffee shop as the sun came up. We were sitting there when someone said "Hey, you have blood on the back of your shirt." No shit Sherlock.

We never find out what happens to these people, it's weird.

So that's the Gish guy cause he gished his head. That was about 20 years ago....

Holy crap! That beats all!

Geez, I was just thinking about you owing me a kick in the pants Barbe...now I'm worried!   

That penis story is wierd but I have to ask .... who was getting the sexual pleasure? the guy or the g/f?

So barbe, why did you give up being a cop?

Rinna, I laughed like crazy... Marble... Ewww...

I was an Auxiliary officer. Minimum 20 hours a month to maintain my status.

Okay, another time, very early on a summer morning, my partner said "What do you want". I said a Fudgicle so we got one and sat by the lake in the car enjoying the beautiful morning. When we were finished, he said "What now?" I was bored so I said, "let's get a body". Two seconds later the radio came through to us about a lady calling in that something was wrong with her husband. An ambulance was on it's way.

We beat the ambulance and got to the house first. The old lady was in her kitchen and said that she had called her husband to come down for his tea but he didn't answer. She had taken her arthritis medication and was waiting for it to work so she could go upstairs but then got worried.

At the bottom of the stairs we could hear what sounded like snoring, but when we went up, he was pretty much dead. He'd had a brain hemhorage and was basically sucking in his own brain fluid.

We had to write up the report and went back to the spot at the lake to meet the Sargeant and hand in the report. We tried to explain what had happened and got stuck on the spelling of the word hemorrhage. We were laughing desperately when the Sargeant  pulled up to get the report. Yah gotta find the humour in it all.

The Sargent told us about a new guy that responded to a man who collapsed mowing his lawn. The paramedics tried to revive him before they transferred him but it didn't look good. Anyway, when the Sargent got to the hospital the family was FURIOUS and he found the cops around a corner just killing themselves laughing! Apparently everytime the paramedics used the defibrilator the garage door went up and down.

I'm sorry, that's just too friggin' funny! 

Okay, the marble thing. Either he was REALLY bad in bed or she was REALLY good at convincing him it wouldn't hurt! I wonder if it worked?

Now, I'm a sewer and I can't even imagine doing that to someone, never mind someone I like! I've seen people disemboweld and throats cut, but that's nothing. I didn't know them...

. . . or she was really, really good in bed and could convince him to do ANYTHING.

(Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch.)

Linda

Not offended at all!

My friend used to work in an emergency room.  One night a man walked in and said he was in a lot of pain and could not even sit.  My friend asked him what the problem was.  He told her that he and his girlfriend were "fooling around" with vegetables, and a cucumber got "stuck" in him.  My friend was appalled!! She told the doctor, and he said, very calmly with a British accent, "Is it an English cucumber."  I still laugh when I think of that story.

I hope this story didn't cross the line!

Here's a funny little Kindergarten Story (as I have taught Kindergarten for a few too many years). One year I brought the class some fresh strawberries that I had picked. I had the kids sitting in a circle on the carpet with their little bowls of strawberries and I started to dollop on the cream. One little boy spoke out and asked if we'd like to know what his family does with cream. I hesitantly said OK. He told us that they put cream on their penis' (I'm not sure why all my stories have penis' in them, perhaps that could be another discussion ). Anyway, I think I must have looked shocked so he explained further: "you know, when it's itchy"  I calmly told him that this was a different kind of cream. 

These stories are so "picture perfect",aren't they?  I heard some interesting ones from a friend who did her emergency medicine residency at a downtown Toronto hospital.  The only one I remember involved a petstore mouse found in a most unusual place......

She decided emerg wasn't for her and went into family practice and obstetrics!

WEATHER UPDATE:  Niagara region has been green, until today.  Temps -5 and snow is falling, and staying.

OMG... Things like that run a chill on my skin.

Leprechaun -

I could show you some American health care horror stories as well.  How about the radiation center I used that overradiated hundreds of people....TWICE.  These same people set up the machines incorrectly for one of my radiation treatments and didn't notice it until I told them.  Every single doctor I've had has made errors that I've caught, which makes me wonder about the ones I didn't catch. 

The fact is that no health care system can be perfect because it's run by imperfect humans.

E

Marble still on my mind -- maybe it rolling around was part of the fun? 

Re. human error:  When I was going in for my re-excision a nurse luckily caught the wrong bag of something before it was hooked into my IV.  She reamed out everyone -- it had something to do with my penicillin and sulpha allergies.  She pointed to the big red band on my wrist, she flipped through my chart pointing out here and there where it was mentioned.  I was already mellowed out with drugs so I didn't panic.  For the next surgery I made point of mentioning my allergies though.  As an aside, so no one says this was shoddy Canadian care, it was in Boston where this happened.  It can happen anywhere...