听 听 听I realize all of my writing is done on Facebook and as such, a good number of people rarely get to see what I think of our current health care situation. So here is a collaboration of my thoughts over the last eight weeks.
听 听 听My life changed eight weeks ago. Not only was I in shock like the rest of the community, but ultimately, because I was vocal and voiced my opinion (quite loudly and with a few choice words), I took on a huge task.
听 听 听My days no longer consist of my job and my family. Now, I鈥檝e added to my days going to meetings, talking on the phone and sending countless emails. My finger points to the health region for this extra work. I鈥檓 trying very hard to reverse this decision to 鈥渢emporarily suspend鈥� our ER and acute care services. This decision the region has made 鈥減ositive鈥� for their employees here. This decision they don鈥檛 want discussed on social media. And this decision they didn鈥檛 even feel required more than a few days鈥� notice to the residents of our community.
听 听 听We have put up with countless cuts to our facility, be it in the doctors, the beds, the constant bypasses and the services themselves over the years. However, here is where I completely draw the line. I do not work for Sunrise, nor am I on any town or RM council so I have nothing to lose here except my hospital. I think I鈥檒l keep working to my goal.
听 听 听I had to laugh when I heard and read the statements put out by our health region, which called this temporary. We may be from a small rural community but we are not the uneducated, gullible people we may be perceived to be. It鈥檚 much more difficult to turn long-term care beds back into acute beds. You can鈥檛 move a palliative patient in his or her last days on earth out of bed.听 And you can鈥檛 kick out a local resident who was just transferred back home to Preeceville. There is only one way to empty those beds now.听 Interesting how they want us to hope for more deaths just so we can have our basic ER and acute care back.
听 听 听They say no jobs will be affected. All of our wonderful caring nurses chose to be acute care nurses in a rural setting. Surely their jobs have been affected. They are now being forced to become long-term care nurses. They are forced out of their daily routines into one that is much slower paced and does not utilize their skill level.
听 听 听What about ward clerks? They no longer have transfers or admissions paperwork to do.听 That was a huge part of their jobs. And lab techs? They are losing 20 per cent of their income by no longer having stand-by and call-back pay. For many of them, that鈥檚 the difference between a summer holiday or mortgage payments. Sunrise tells me that wasn鈥檛 guaranteed pay anyway, but when the ER and acute services were open, it certainly was.
听 听 听Already people are giving up hope and not even visiting the clinic anymore, causing the amount of people entering the lab daily to drop by at least a third. We can鈥檛 forget about our ambulance service, can we? We hear doctors cannot work 24-seven, but we are putting our EMS staff through this constantly. The EMS work with the doctors and the emergency room. They are not a replacement for them! They used to average 30 calls per month. Now they are doing that in a week. And because we have no ER here, those calls take them away from our community for many hours at a time. They can burn out too! They need work-life balance as well.
听 听 听I am angry we are being put through this. This has caused so much anxiety in our community, and so much anxiety in my own personal life. My six-year-old son has a dangerous allergy to peanuts and if he were to have a serious reaction, he could die. I know that may not bother the health region, but it bothers me. It bothers me that my back-up plan for him if the ambulance is away from town is to epi him and then feed him a combined 24 teaspoons of different medications while his throat is closing and he鈥檚 terrified and struggling to breathe and likely vomiting anyway.
听 听 听It bothers me that someone who already lives 30 minutes from Preeceville will now need to drive 60-90 minutes to receive emergent care. It bothers me that we will have to pay larger ambulance bills to receive emergent care which we could have gotten much closer to home. It bothers me that if my doctor feels I need to be admitted, I must drive to another town and stay in an unfamiliar hospital. It bothers me that the health region feels our two ambulances with their over-worked and exhausted staff can be the scapegoat. It bothers me that they are always out on calls and not readily available for my own family in the event of an emergency. It bothers me that we鈥檙e told STARS will save us when we know it cannot always fly and when it can, it takes at least 80 minutes to get here in perfect conditions. It bothers me that we weren鈥檛 even given more than 12 days鈥� notice that these changes were going to take place. It bothers me that our community worked so hard and raised millions of dollars for this facility and now these vital services have been taken away.
听 听 听It bothers me that it鈥檚 been suggested that I move; pick up my family from the place I chose to live in and move because of a decision that was out of my hands. Who would buy my house and move here knowing we don鈥檛 have a hospital? I would never leave this community.听 听听听听听听听听听 Our school became peanut-free for my son. Everyone knows our story and protects him. How could I ever express my true gratitude to this community and its people for this? I am so proud to be from here.
听 听 听As I look at my own Facebook feed, I am always saddened by the posts I see. There are warnings to be safe and stay healthy because we don鈥檛 have a hospital. I know it鈥檚 not 鈥渃losed鈥� but having a building and staff that can鈥檛 help us is the same thing as being closed. We are all hoping and praying for no accidents and no health issues for our entire community of 6,000 people because we have no hospital.
听 听 听When I sent my six-year-old to school on June 1, I had more anxiety then, than I was on his very first day of school, because if he happened to be exposed to peanuts and the school called 9-1-1, there may not be any medical attention to come to his aid. That鈥檚 the reality we live in right now.
听 听 听My children, aged six and nine, worry constantly about the hospital. They shouldn鈥檛 have any worries at their age, let alone health care worries. But they know the value of this facility in our community first hand. Three years ago, both of them were admitted into our hospital with Norovirus (Norwalk). This virus is awful and caused very sudden and extreme dehydration and lethargy. There were no beds available as they were all full. My kids were able to stay in the emergency room and slept on stretchers hooked up to an IV until a bed became available. The care and compassion they received from the nurses and doctor over the next few days were second to none: from the toast an RN made late at night because my three-year-old finally wanted to eat, to a bath in the giant tub so they could start to feel human again.
听 听 听We were treated more like family than patients in this facility. This is the genuine care you cannot find in the bigger hospitals.
听 听 听We have come so far already. We have stood together united and voiced our concerns and they have been heard. We received funding for a third doctor and will have three doctors as of October 1. This is huge, and it鈥檚 because of this community. There is no one hero in this and there is no small group of heroes in this. This is one strong community that came together when we needed one another the most and this is our first victory.
听 听 听We also have an additional physician in the clinic right now helping out the regular doctor and nurse practioner so we don鈥檛 have to wait so long for appointments. We have acknowledgement from the government (both provincially and federally) that we can do our own recruiting so we can find doctors who best suit our community and its needs. And we are constantly working together to ensure we can retain these doctors that we get. We will no longer leave these issues to be the sole decision of someone else. Our community will now be fully involved.
听 听 听We need to be proud of our achievements thus far. And we need to band together, now more than ever, to achieve all our goals. We have won a few battles but we are still fighting the war.
听 听 听I will not quit. I will not keep quiet. I will not allow our facility to be another one that closes in our health region. I will not stand back and wait for this to resolve itself. I will work towards a future for our community that includes 24-seven emergency room and acute services in our hospital. Who鈥檚 with me?
听
Stacey Strykowski
Preeceville
