My body cramped when I bent to pet the dog. I screamed in pain, then lay there for 30 minutes until I could crawl to get some Tylenol, but I wound up on the floor again where I stayed for an hour unable to move. Thankfully, the Coast Guard rescue team came and I made it to the hospital.
Once in emergency, the too-many painkillers I took kicked in and I returned home to retrieve the dogs. The triage team said it would be a few hours before I would be seen and I couldn't leave them there.
In fact, the wait took almost seven hours.
I donSA国际影视传媒檛 know who felt worse: me sitting there in tears because the aspirin wore off and the pain returned, or the doctor who knew how long her patients had waited and the discomfort some were in.
Several visitors to emergency left, fed up with sitting for so long without any progress. I wanted to leave too, but couldn't, fearful that my back would lock in again the next morning. I live alone on a houseboat with two dogs. I couldn't afford not to be seen.
I finally saw the doctor at 6:15, who apologized; I first arrived at 11 a.m. She explained that she was the only physician there that day and said sadly, these long wait times have become the norm and not the exception. That wasnSA国际影视传媒檛 right in a community such as Yellowknife. I could tell she felt terrible.
I heard her consult with others in the ward, impressed by her thoroughness even though she was on her own. The waiting room filled as the day wore on from a handful of people in the morning to the many there now in the early evening.
The doctor said the numbers would continue to climb as the night wore on with patients having to wait well past midnight, even into the early morning hours before they would be seen.
Why is that in a territory such as ours?
As she prepared the needles for my back, she suggested that patients should write their MPs, telling them about the long wait times. As a doctor who also lives here, she sees her clients on the streets every day and knows what they go through because of the staff shortage.
Too often, we blame the doctors when the problem is with the system itself. It does become personal.
This is not just the fault of the federal government, which allocates funding through transfer payments. The territorial government needs to make bolstering healthcare numbers a priority and act on this too, even if it means using money collected here. We know that there is a shortage of physicians across Canada but in a territory such as ours blessed with so much, why aren't more funds being used to bolster health care staffing numbers?
We cannot expect the federal government to do it all. This, after all, is about saving lives because without more physicians, we could easily burn out our existing staff and end up with nothing. Is that what we want?
While I lay on the floor that morning, I thought about the people in Gaza and Ukraine who had few, if any, medical personnel to turn to. I just had to be transported to shore. So many others do not enjoy such a gift.
I did make it home that night after some needles and drugs, but I thought about those elsewhere who could not say the same. We cannot afford to lose what we have.
The NWT has so much on its plate with the effects of climate change growing by the day. Nevertheless, we must not forget about those who keep us alive right now: our health care staff. We must provide them with the support they need or risk losing them.
All of us must put more pressure on our MLAs and MPs to increase our staffing levels and resources. We owe this to them and ourselves. The physician's job is to do their best to keep us healthy, our job is to give them the resources they need to do that.
Our lives, after all, depend on it.
