"At times I read or watch them and break down in tears or scream at the screen"
An account of a broken healthcare system and a society unwilling to accept death as a part of life.
This a piece that we have received from a reader. We hope it resonates with you.
I have experienced, very deeply, death in my family. Dementia, chronic heart disease, cancer, significant chronic lung disease, affected at all ages. Because of this, I have navigated our massive health care, palliative and retirement living systems. I have walked the halls of ICU endlessly, met families in the same boat I was. Bracing ourselves for the inevitable if you were at the end of a chronic disease, in absolute melt down shock if it was a death that blindsided you. I have faced both. Our family faced a significant loss last year during the pandemic.
The life lesson for me was that I wanted to actively give back to the very disease institutions that took my family away from me. I am actively involved on behalf of my deceased to ensure that my journey can help other people facing the same dark days and help them navigate our horrific health care system.
I am not special. I am not alone, thousands of families across Canada face my journey every day. Death from a chronic disease is a prolonged period, sudden death from accidents and suicides, etc., is brutally shocking, losing children, unimaginable. A death is a significant event for patients and their families. However the reality is, death is inevitable for all of us.
I read an interesting article about death by Anita Hannig about death and the conversations we need to have with people. I quote her: “in the United States the end of life has become so medicalized that death is often viewed as a failure, rather than as an expected stage of life.” This is the same situation in Canada. This position has escalated during the pandemic. In a frightening manner. The medicalized failed death conversation has now invaded social media platforms and created more division. This invasion was started by the media, government and a small group of medical doctors and academia in Ontario.
Daily, a group of media MD stars that extoll how busy they are, but have well set-up studios in government-paid facilities or their home office, describe in emotional detail the deaths they see in the ICU and how slammed they are. Ironically, they have time to escalate their star value endlessly on twitter and TV.
Well known Globe and Mail reporters and doctors post a close shot picture of an intubated patient. It crossed the boundaries of all decency on behalf of the patient, family and the guidelines for reporters at the paper. Daily, a group of media MD stars that extoll how busy they are, but have well set-up studios in government-paid facilities or their home office, describe in emotional detail the deaths they see in the ICU and how slammed they are. Ironically, they have time to escalate their star value endlessly on twitter and TV. They have massive followers and their followers parrot their talking points with, by all appearance have no idea or context what they are actually talking about when they retweet. These doctors also cross their very own regulatory body social media guidelines.
I find these messages deeply shocking and violate the intense privacy of the death of a loved one.
As someone who lost family and the thousands of others, these diatribes and posts on social media by doctors et al. about how cold we are about death statistics, intubation process, death moment descriptions, I find these messages deeply shocking and violate the intense privacy of the death of a loved one. At times I read or watch them and break down in tears or scream at the screen. The vast majority of people with Covid will never face death or intubation and it is intensely irresponsible these media stars have not been called out by their regulatory bodies for amping this message.
If you have lost someone due to a disease or sudden event, you will know in reality the medical community will do everything they can to save someone. They are trained for that. But that same team will tell with you with brutal honesty what you are facing, the path ahead to death in brutal black and white terms. The social media doctor stars counter that reality with their strange posts and interviews. I have my opinions on why they are choosing to sensationalize death from Covid-19, but a lot of the dialogue is used as political warfare against politicians. These parrot statements are used a lot - "cares about business more than death", "you don't care about people dying at 90", etc. Anthony Furey factually reports death by location and age group without comment. He gets rained on with holy hell statements on twitter that he is an uncaring conservative. He is stating black and white where deaths are, which is aligned with the reality that anyone who has gone through the health care system with chronic disease the same medical experts will tell you brutally in no minced words your chance of living.
As a society, painfully, we need to accept death as reality.
As a society, painfully, we need to accept death as reality. We live in a weird echo social media chamber of food, fashion, selfies. Social media is awash with experts and non-experts telling us about how scary Covid-19 death is. The reality is it is speeding up the death process in our elderly. C. diff, influenza has historically done the same thing unfortunately. Quoting Anita again: “That death has become something many Americans avoid and abhor — an enemy to be defeated — is evident elsewhere too. Just look at the plethora of contemporary fantasies of immortality, which range from anti-aging creams to efforts to download a person’s brain so he or she can continue to live virtually, to cryonics, the practice of freezing and storing bodies or body parts in the hope that future scientists will thaw them and bring them back to life.”
Our family voted for Doug Ford, because he promised to be more patient-centric. As a family that battled multiple health care systems, we saw the bloat, we saw the duplication, we saw the hallway health care. It has been going on for years. The final straw for me was waiting for my spouse’s 9 hour surgery in a waiting room with no phone plug and ancient chairs, and a CEO making close to a million dollars a year whose hospital parked my spouse in an ICU nurse’s station because they were overloaded. Greedy, grabbing any grant money they could, but never invested in patients and caregivers. Between two different hospital systems, duplication of tests within a month. Nurses at Christmas in acute care online shopping on hospital computers while us Caregivers carried the burden.
Accepting death statistically or as a reality is not callous. It is self awareness of the circle of life. Tongue in cheek I suggest people go back and watch the Lion King.
As well, vote properly and counter the media stars.
If you would like to share your story, please email OldNormalOntario@protonmail.com.
I yell at the computer as I read because of the sheer ignorance of people. The reality is life has risks and you can't run and hide. But when lies and distortion are used to scare people that's when the line is crossed. An Ontario doctor confirms that people go into ICU after cardiac surgery and test positive for covid. No symptoms of pneumonia no hypoxia. Same for strokes and traumas. They were swabbed and just called positive. Then counted as a case. Many GTA patients are being transferred but it's not all covid. The question is with a field hospital sitting ready at Sunnybrook why are not covid patients with the classic signs not being transferred there to allow hospitals to function with regular surgeries and emergencies? Is it because they don't want to spend the money as starting up Sunnybrook would be very costly?
According to data more patients with pneumonia not covid have been filling up hospitals since April. Why. ? Is masks causing bacterial infections such as bacterial pneumonia.. Is vaccines causing other respiratory infections such as bacterial pneumonia? Are they transferring patients as the hospitals are not truly overwhelmed and are operating at normal levels now as in the past? So for good cost sense they transfer patients to really empty hospitals. Are the surge ICU doctors getting $4500 a shift as opposed to their former $750 a shift?
Those are questions journalists should be asking. Not just spreading fear unsupported by data or science. Are the younger patients working in factories forced to wear masks succumbing to lung issues due to the dangers of oxygen deprivation lung irritation and inflammation? Again yes covid patients with hypoxia are coming in but what is the driving force for hospitalizations and ICU? Covid or adverse reactions to vaccine or secondary infections due to masks. Does this justify cancelling cancer surgeries? Is it justification to put the main focus on covid forgetting all other diseases and ailments which can become emergencies in the not too distant future. The red flags are there for vaccine adverse reactions including fear after getting back. As well without long term studies and even proof that the vaccine works and for the majority wasn't even necessary as not at risk are we causing more problems with the vaccines then if we let nature take its course. A fair question based on the fact that some health officials refuse to lift lock downs or mask mandates indicating they do.not have confidence in the vaccine.
What I have found much like the testing people have become obsessed with the vaccine. This push and scare tactics have somehow made the vaccine a monumental event in people's lives Selfies taken and shared.. For whose benefit though.
Thank you so much for sharing your story. We have had our share of heartbreak with our healthcare system, including an interaction with an oncologist who told us that a treatment for my 75 year old Mother-in-law was not available because it was too expensive and they were reserving treatment for younger patients with better predicted outcomes. What is most shocking to me about Canadians is the way so many of us wear our “free healthcare” like a badge of honour when we would never accept such abysmal service in an interaction with any other product or service in society. Hate to continue to beat this drum but we are where we are due primarily to a media comprised of activists instead of journalists. The activists who call themselves journalists refuse to ask the tough questions and the ones that do are shouted down as right wing conspiracy theorists. People like Anthony Furey should be celebrated instead of shouted down but this is the dystopia we call Canada today. Have you noticed that big governments are getting bigger? I am not a fan of big Pharma but try to put your political beliefs aside and think about the reasons why Pharma and many other private industries are fleeing Canada? Who will create the great jobs that we need to move our economy and quality of life forward? Look at the budget folks. Over 1,000 references to benefits and 30ish references to productivity. The TV doctors do not have to justify their decisions to anyone and they have willing participants like Ford and many other Premiers who continue to say we will trust the science. Science should be debated and transparent, especially when we are 14 months into this nightmare and we have societies like Florida, Texas, Taiwan, Sweden and yes, even China, who are mostly back to normal as measured by their economic and health data Couple this with big tech owned social media platforms who actively censor people who dare to have a different view than the narrative and we are closer to a China dystopia than most of us think. Try and find the DeSantis discussion with the Stanford and Harvard specialists who advised on Florida’s pandemic strategy. Instead of celebrating DeSantis the legacy media are desperstely trying to poke holes in his strategy as evidenced by a brutal and borderline libellous story on 60 minutes. Our truly awful and broken healthcare system is but one symptom of the problem. BTW this is not an Ontario or Canada problem. Pay attention to states like New York, New Jersey, Illinois, California and Michigan - all proponents of strict lockdowns and all vying neck and neck for the worst results as defined by per capita deaths and hospitalizations.