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FAREWELL POSTINGS

An Echocardiogram Expertly Performed by a Poached Technician

 November 16, 2024

Today, I had a thoracic echocardiogram. The first since Lucette passed away. My family doctor will get the results in about a week’s time. The technician who performed the procedure was an Egyptian-Canadian. It again reminded me of how the Canadian health care system depends on pilfered expertise from the developing world to survive. I level this criticism in spite of the fact that it was an old Nigerian doctor who corrected a diagnose and thereby extended my wife’s life by at least five years.

Lucette was incorrectly diagnosed with cancer in both lungs. The respirologist (a medical specialist who deals in diseases of the lungs and the respiratory tract) after viewing X-rays, and the result of a biopsy on the right lung, told her that the cancer was probably in stage four, it’s final stage (there are actually five stages of lung cancer, with 0 being stage 1, go figure). She might have only six months to live.

With what was believed to be cancerous lesions in both lungs, surgery was out of the question. Only radiation therapy could extend her life, and she was referred to a radiologist at the Ottawa General Hospital. The old Nigerian-born doctor took one look at the X-rays and decided something was not right. He ordered a biopsy on her other lung before scheduling radiation treatment.

The result of the second biopsy revealed not cancer, but a deadly bacterium feasting on her left lung. If left untreated, it would kill her faster than the cancer in her right lung. Radiation on the bacterium could have had the opposite effect it has on cancerous cells and caused the bacterial colony to grow and expand in spectacular fashion. .

At no time did any of these highly trained doctors have to get the approval from an insurance company nurse, which is routine in the United States, before authorizing the necessary tests and life-saving treatments.

In the United States, it is not inconceivable that the radiologist who wanted a second biopsy to confirm the respirologist’s diagnosis would have been denied by the insurance company nurse, with disastrous consequences.

It had been three months and five courses of radiation therapy. A PET scan revealed that no cancer cells have left the lung, as was feared. As for the bacterium, she was required to take drugs every day for 18 months; drugs that she received free of charge thanks to Tommy Douglas.

If we had been in the United States, chances are we would be facing bankruptcy and my wife would be counting the days to her last breath. And this is the private system that some praise as being superior to Canada’s government-funded and administered health care. I don’t think so.

Don’t believe Conservative rhetoric that a system where your level of care and life-expectancy is a function of your wealth is an improvement over what we have. If only we could graduate enough of our own medical personnel, and not have to resort to pilfering from the developing world.