I recently ended up in the hospital due to injury, and although my injury has impacted me, so has the experience.
Delivered by ambulance for what would end up being a seven-plus hour visit, I, in a neck brace with a suspected head and neck injury, was left alone staring at a ceiling.
I hear moans nearby, children’s distant screams, anxious voices as my eyes focus on the ceiling.
Words fill the air from whom I assume to be the older man; my peripheral vision can barely make out. “Please don’t let me die, please.”
Perhaps a heart attack like my dad in 1980?
Who’s saving this man’s life in 2022?
He’s someone's dad too.
More moans, faint screams continue, maybe a child’s broken arm similar to my own during childhood? I realize I’m living the current reality of 2022 Ontario hallway medicine… but if that wasn’t enough, my experience then became more impactful ….
I hear a mumble from a woman in pain, “Please help me.”
Overworked healthcare workers stretched too thin to be at her side… ….
A little while later, again …
“Please someone, if you’re there … please help me. I don’t want to die in a hallway”.
Again no response, but then …
A faint mumble of a familiar cadence, words sounding like the Lord’s Prayer … yes, I hear it and join in, “Give us this day our daily ….”
Her faint mumble begins to match mine.. she knows someone’s there.
I couldn’t see her. I was still in a neck brace, under bright fluorescent lights.
Why, in a community with reputations of affluence and one of Canada’s most desired livable towns, do patients feel they’re better off praying to God instead of being confident in the quality of care?
I believe healthcare workers are heroes; just as an educator, I’ve been called one myself. These heroes are also overworked human beings because the systems we work in are grossly underfunded.
I still don’t know if she was dying, but she needed something at that moment.
She needed to know someone cared.
Can we, as Ontarians, honestly look at the governments who inadequately fund and staff our healthcare system ever be sure of the same?
