My dad likes climbing ladders in the garage he is building
he also enjoys collecting old movies and cooking meat.
so when i heard he fell off a ladder and broke his rib, here is what i sent him:
i know it’s a safe bet he doesn’t already have the movie because i’m sure he thinks Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn are too sappy romantic cheesy. which is part of the reason i picked it. i figured he deserves a little torture for being so silly.
also, do you have any idea how many songs there are out there about broken ribs?
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February 24th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
This is a great idea :) I am sure Dad will appreciate it! Clever.
February 24th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Laughter and a broken rib is NOT a good combination. Trust me.
Hope he’s feeling better soon.
February 24th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
My 2 most recent experiences with Canadian health care:
1 – phoned my family doctor for a non-emergency appointment Friday morning. Got the appointment for 10:30am Monday.
2 – injured myself outside of work or any applicable health insurance and got the following:
- Immediate care in emergency. No waiting. Then moved upstairs into the proper ward.
- 4 days in hospital with round-the-clock nursing care. The shift nurses had assigned patients and treated me like I was in a luxury spa. “press this button by your bed anytime if there’s anything you need, day or night, Mr. Hawke”
- all medications and necessary equipment supplied including the tubing stuff, needles, 3 days of oxygen, something in my arm to connect the IV bags, morphine injections for 3 days (they thought I’d had enough when the nurse entered my room while I had my belt wrapped around my upper arm pulled tight with my teeth while looking at her/him longingly through junkie eyes), Tylenol 3, Ibuprofen, something to keep my blood from clotting from extended bed rest (I thought they said it was “Hepburn” named after the famous Audrey)?, Gravol (and who knows what other medications), food, spiffy clothes with no back, 4 sets of x rays, a CT scan, blood tests, a surgeon’s consultation, daily visits by a surgeon to tell me what’s happening with my lung, a radiologist to read the CT scan, a physiotherapist to teach me how to breath, porters to wheel me to the proper place in the hospital without delay, a supply of the medications I usually take which are unrelated as to why I was in hospital, etc. etc.
Was this stuff free?
No.
It was paid for by my fellow Canadian taxpayers who, along with me, pay a portion of our taxes to make sure health care is available to all, even if you cannot afford it.
I asked the nurse processing my discharge papers if I needed to sign anything? She said “no”. Then I asked, rather sarcastically, if they’d send me the bill. She gave me a puzzled look and returned my sarcasm with “Of course; it will be a big one”
The end result is that I’m all fixed and don’t have to sell any of my kids for medical experiments to pay for the fixing. My kids are lucky. This time.
February 24th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Yay for healthcare!
I feel pretty lucky to live in this country – similar experience to you, Mr. Hawke!
Short version: Destroyed leg & knee in Cuba, got xrays and slab cast, came home (total bill $215, go figure), followed by 5 days in hospital here with surgery to pin my leg back together and round the clock care and meds and many surgeons. Physio for months through the hospital, and my GP even called me at home after I was discharged just to check in because he’d gotten notice that I was in the hospital – as I’d gone straight there from the airport, I was blown away that he even knew.
Two more knee reconstructions yet to come, and I am thankful every day as I realize that had this happened to me in the US without private health care that I’d be paying for my 3 surgeries + related costs for the rest of my life.
Yay for not having to sell my husband/pets/kidneys to pay for my fixing. And, of course, extra cheers for Katharine Hepburn and endless meat!
February 25th, 2009 at 8:14 am
Glad your dad is feeling better and is on the way to recovery!!
February 25th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Ha, well having read your Dad’s post, I now know where you get it from. Or at least, some of your “it”. Lucky girl. :)
As for healthcare, yay! And I must say that before the Greatest Canadian show ran a few years back, I didn’t even know who Tommy Douglas WAS. Now I revere him!
http://www.cbc.ca/greatest/top_ten/nominee/douglas-tommy.html
February 25th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
That’s some nifty gift giving idea’s there.
February 25th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
Hey I’ve had experiences with both Canadian and U.S. health care!
I moved to the U.S. on July 2, 2008 to be with my then-boyfriend, now-husband! I got a job and my health insurance kicked in on Oct 1, 2008. On Oct 20, 2008, a chiropractor herniated a disk in my neck, resulting in the loss of the use of my arm! Long story short, I got into emergency surgery on Oct 25.
Now for the insurance part. After I got home and was recovering, I started receiving bills. It’s stressful enough recovering from a spinal surgery and then to get bills on top of it. I logged into my blueshield account(my insurance co here)and on each bill it said “code B0 which means they are waiting for more data”. On all the bills surrounding my surgery, it said processed and paid at 0 dollars. I called blueshield and they told me I had to prove my surgery wasn’t from a pre-existing condition. The bills started coming, approx 20 of them in all. I had to sign a “release of medical information” so that they could do this review, all the while terrified that I would have to pay the $35,000 tab. It has been 4 months since the surgery and just last Friday I got another form in the mail asking me to sign a release of medical information (which I’ve done twice now but who knows what happened to the paperwork).
Another thing that irks me about the american system is that all these insurance companies have “plans” with the doctors. The doctors will bill out for $600 and the agreement between the insurance company and doctor is that the doctor will be paid $430 (i’m using an approximation of one of my bills). The hospital has to write off the other $170.00. BUT if you do not have health insurance, you pay the entire $600. Now, how is that fair?
I have also experience Canadian health care in having my appendix removed. The system moves on a priority basis and while yes, you do wait longer for “elective” surgeries, nobody is excluded from health care. It’s definitely not perfect but neither is the system i’m currently in. I’m really hoping obama can do something but if Bill Clinton couldn’t / didn’t after 8 years in office, I don’t have much hope for obama.
My american co-workers are aghast at the Canadian health care system. I see it in the newspapers here the horror stories they tell to scare the shit out of americans to let them know that they CAN’T POSSIBLY have a health care system like the canadian one. It is possible to scare people into submission. SHUT UP or else we’ll have a health care system like canada’s!! And they shut up.
Well, not all of them of course. it takes a village, people!
February 26th, 2009 at 1:57 am
I am proud to pay for your dad’s care. As well as fixing the knee, leg, and anything else that is broken by a Canadian. It IS a right.
I worked an ER shift down here in Mexico and I kid you not, we had to turn a 20-something kid undergoing tachycardia and we could NOT do ANYTHING on him without his health care plan card. When he started getting worse and he still didn’t have proof of insurance (we weren’t even aloud to even hook up the EKG to this guy) we told him to go to a hospital that was recognized by his insurance – stabilized him a bit and sent him off in an ambulance. I got off shift, asking the duty doc if we’ll ever hear what happened to him. He said no, and that sadly you almost never hear what happens when someone gets transferred.
He was there when I returned for my next shift 12 hours later. Turns out his employer was pocketing his insurance – so the insurance co. gave him another ambulance ride back to us. We treated him as best as we could – and in all fairness he was totally stable by the time he came back – but it really pissed me off and let’s say that’s all I should probably mention about it.
I miss Canada more every day I’m in a non-socialized medicine country. There may be Costco and Starbucks and Krispy Kreme and The Body Shop down here but there’s more important things missing. . . . .
. . . .Moore’s “Sicko” anyone?
February 26th, 2009 at 1:58 am
For bonus points: a 20 year-old with tachycardia should always be suspected of what?