Every week, Nova Scotians on the Facebook group Nova Scotia Health Care in Crisis — Time to Protest share personal experiences about this province’s ailing health-care system.
The group, begun last March, is already 5,000 members strong and growing.
For today’s column, I’m sharing a series of lightly edited excerpts from such posts — identifying details removed — because they eloquently speak about the day-to-day, frustrating reality of health care in our province:
“My good friend’s boy, a heart transplant patient, died yesterday with no family doctor to have managed his issues ... such a sad, sad state we are in. High-level-need medical patients need family doctors. YESTERDAY.”
“Our second time in outpatients this week, 6+ hours wait. Everyone here is in some kind of agony. Some people are even leaving. Please someone, help this broken health care system. It’s scary.”
“I know people who have been in such mental health crises they’ve called ambulances to actually be seen. I’m currently on 6 medications with no actual diagnosis because I can’t access mental health. I’ve lost my job, my self-esteem, my will and I’ve been seeking help for years.”
“I have been trying now for a week to make an appointment for lab work, the website is not working and the phone lines are so clogged up, can’t get through. JUST ONE MORE WAY OUR HEALTH CARE IS IN CRISIS.”
“Our health care sucks. I have to wait 12-18 months just to get a scope done to see what is causing my everyday sickness and the specialist is considering it ‘non urgent’ so in the damn meantime I have to suffer while waiting to see a doctor and I have been already like this for a year and half.”
“I am waiting to see a specialist to get nerve block injections in my neck, so I don’t have reoccurring torticollis (wry neck), which results in my chronic, debilitating migraines. The waiting list (just to see the neurologist) is FOUR YEARS, from today!”
“What’s the best protocol for someone to get methadone? I know a young man, who is an opiate user, who’s been to MIDDLETON detox every Thursday, begging for help ... they just say, ‘You’re on the list.’ He’s gonna die ...”
Call them frontline testimonials of the human costs of a broken health-care system.
It’s sobering stuff.
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