Calgary Herald -
On a weekend trip for a wedding in Spruce Grove, I had the usual semi-anxious bouts of overthinking the contents of the first aid kit in the vehicle, the smaller version I keep in my purse. For over two years, I’ve been repeating the same mantra to my sons: Be careful. You do not want to end up in an emergency room right now. I should listen to my own advice.
An ambulance proceeds to the emergency room entrance of the Foothills Medical Centre on Friday, September 24, 2021.
In a thoughtless instant helping with dinner, I pick up a burner under a chafing dish, but it has already been lit. One of the guests is a paramedic and advises me to go to a hospital. My injuries have the telltale signs of third-degree burns. Someone fills a Ziplock bag with cold water and I dunk my burnt digits while my cousin drives to Misericordia Community Hospital in west Edmonton.
The triage nurse tells me the estimated wait to see a doctor is eight to 10 hours. I can’t wait, my kids are back at the wedding. I’m walking and talking so I’m OK, relatively speaking. The nurse turns away from her computer and leans in, like an old friend with a secret. She lists the supplies I should buy and tells me to see a doctor as soon as I return to Calgary.
I slosh my bag of water down the aisles of a drug store, picking up what I need. I wonder what happens to people who can’t wait eight to 10 hours, people who must work, who can’t afford $60 for gauze, ointment, waterproof tape and Second Skin. My cousin takes me back to the wedding and wraps up my fingers. I’ve missed dinner, but I’ve lost my appetite.
Back in Calgary, a volunteer at Sheldon M. Chumir Urgent Care asks me the COVID-19 screening questions and hands me a small, yellow piece of paper. He also carries a stack of red pieces. On the wall above the waiting areas are larger versions of these colours. In the farthest corner, people with red pieces look unwell.
A digital sign announces the wait time: four hours. Monitors share messages about opioid addiction and recovery. This facility is in the Beltline, my old neighbourhood, one with a diverse population including many at-risk citizens. Some patients have their worldly belongings in a shopping cart outside. It’s also sandwiched between downtown office towers and affluent communities. An older, well-dressed woman approaches the security desk asking where the Second Cup coffee shop is located. She’s meeting someone before getting vaccinations for her cruise at the travel clinic upstairs. This is Calgary.
A woman on her phone tells a young child that someone else will pick him up. On another call, she pleads with her mother to stop asking for money. She’s down to her last $40.
A young man introduces himself to the man in the next chair, a new Canadian from India. They talk about hospitals, the Chumir and Rockyview being the two best choices for ER visits, in the young man’s opinion. He’s a cook at a restaurant downtown.
They talk about the Calgary Stampede, how expensive it is, how the city changes for 10 days, and not always in a good way
“You don’t want to be in the ER during Stampede,” says the cook.
When my name is called, I explain my situation to a young doctor. I tell him I feel stupid for what happened, but on the upside, I kept my right hand out of the human soup at the World Water Park the day after I injured myself. He laughs and I’m relieved that he doesn’t scold me for taking three kids to a wave pool with third-degree burns on my hand.
He must debride the burnt tissue, which will require freezing the affected fingers first. I feel nauseous.
The doctor suggests I don’t watch the procedure. I look away and he makes conversation to take my mind off what’s happening. We discuss the diversity of the patients he sees, how he’s from Edmonton but studied medicine in Calgary. I say he’s a superhero for doing what he does, under increasingly deteriorating conditions. He says the real superheroes are the social workers.
“I remember the moment I realized how Calgary differs from Edmonton. I was in med school, meeting friends at a craft beer place. It was packed, but I got a table just as people were leaving. A man in a nice suit approached and offered me a 150 bucks for my table.” The doctor shakes his head, “I was a student. I took the money. But in that moment, I learned a lot about Calgary.”
The next day, I take a seat in the waiting room of the burn unit at Foothills Medical Centre. A man waits with both arms, both hands, and all 10 fingers bandaged. Perspective smarts like a needle in the thumb.
Two nurses are in the corner, talking. One of them says she “finally had to call in sick” because she had only slept four hours the past three days. They talk about feeling overwhelmed and stressed out. They’re running on fumes.
I’m taught how to care for the wounds. The nurse is impressed with the bandaging done at the Chumir. She wishes they had the same materials, but supply chain issues are such that they have “run out of almost everything.” She puts breathable pads and little compression sleeves on my fingers. They look like tiny leg warmers.
After a follow-up trip to the burn unit, it has cost me just over $150 to treat this injury, including supplies, a prescription ointment and many hours of parking.
What stands out to me with each hospital is the positivity. You would never guess that these workers have come through 2½ years of unprecedented challenges brought on by the global pandemic or that they’re working without the proper items to care for their patients due to supply chain issues.
Every patient was given the same level of respect, whether they were in designer shoes or wearing their only set of clothes. The waiting rooms held diverse Albertans from eight to 80 years old, and everyone was greeted with caring interest. There was no tone of jaded exasperation or bad morale. There was no evidence of a broken system or a group of workers who, arguably, have few reasons for optimism. I witnessed high quality of care provided by people who have every reason to be angry, frustrated and fed up.
The South Calgary Health Centre has just announced a reduction in patient intake hours for urgent care due to staffing challenges. The Airdrie Community Health Centre recently began weekend overnight closures of the urgent care centre for eight weeks due to a lack of doctors. Rural hospitals around the province are cutting back hours.
We are a province with many financially comfortable citizens, but many of our neighbours are folks who don’t have money for their own medical supplies, people who must decide if they can afford to take a day off work to wait for a doctor. It only makes sense that a province with this much wealth takes care of its most vulnerable to ensure these top-notch health-care workers remain here, caring for the health of all Albertans.
Heidi Klaassen is a Calgary writer and editor.
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