In praise of Hamilton Generals Heart Team and Canada’s Medicare System

It was a year ago yesterday that I had a quadruple heart bypass, hard to believe how quickly time goes by when one is enjoying the revitalization of one’s engine. Unfortunately it was not as simple as bypass surgery, it sounds strange to refer to something that was so difficult a few years ago as being simple however medical advances and talent have made it so. In my case they cracked my chest open and to their dismay found the pericardium sack had atrophied and was bonded to the heart, suddenly the team was hit with a major problem that required immediate attention before the bypass could be performed.

Without a second thought the team went into action and did what professionals do best, the doctor peeled the pericardium from my heart and removed it and then he performed the bypass. The bypass was further complicated by the fact I suffer from hardening of the arteries and they had difficulty finding sections that were flexible enough to use as bypass arteries.

The assisting doctor closed me up, he too did an amazing job, I defy you to find the scar on my chest and those on my legs are almost gone as well.

I feel it is important to heap praise, not only on the heart team but on the system as well.

This is an election year and we have a government that is hell bent on destroying a system that serves and treats all Canadians as equals and I am pissed off. I think what bothers me most is the people who support and vote for this government, they do so wearing blinders and spewing the venomous falsehoods about the cost of universal medicare and its pitfalls. Yet these same naysayers use and abuse the system not realizing what the end cost to them will be once it has been destroyed.

Wait times in Canada are no different than in the US, I have American relatives and friends who complain just as loudly as Canadians do. In my case, and I am not special, my cardiologist offered to get me in quicker if I felt the need to jump the queue. I didn’t.

I waited for that inevitable call from the surgeon, it came on Friday February 7^th with a date for the following Tuesday, on Sunday the 9^th my surgeon called the house and explained that the Tuesday schedule was a mess but if I came in immediately he would do me Monday instead. By Tuesday morning I was sitting up in bed and able to walk to the john on my own.

As is customary the OR team did the usual meet and greet before surgery and being the silly fool my kids say I am I had the urge to toy with the anesthesiologist, I told him that when they crack me open I would hear the saw, of course he insisted I wouldn’t. The banter continued on the operating table until he knocked me out.

As fate would have it when they lifted my on to the gurney to take me to ICU I opened my eyes and gave the anesthesiologist, who was at my head pushing the gurney, two thumbs up. By this time I had forgotten all about teasing him, apparently he hadn’t and showed up in my room the next morning and said “I need to know, did you hear the saw”, I couldn’t help myself and started to laugh and said “no”. I don’t think he slept all night worrying… he just turned and left the room.

In the end this amazing effort by the heart team and the Hamilton General Hospital and their professional staff not only restored my health but I didn’t have to file for bankruptcy as many Americans do.