Living rural, you often hear people complain about the availability and quality of health care services. Many specialties require time-consuming and costly trips to Edmonton for the appointment, and it can be easy to rag on our local emergency rooms for long waits.
Having experienced hospital care in both St. Paul and Edmonton, I’m incredibly grateful for the people who work in healthcare locally and want to emphasize how much better the care I received here was.
Shortly after Christmas, I developed mastitis, which is an infection of the breast tissue that sometimes happens to nursing mothers. It was extremely painful, and I had a high fever, but when I went to the ER the morning after my symptoms started, I fully expected to be given a prescription for some oral antibiotics and told to take another Tylenol.
Instead, they started the sepsis protocol of bloodwork, an ECG, IV antibiotics, other medications to bring my fever down and the first of many bags of fluids. Within a few hours, arrangements were made for my nephew to drive me to Edmonton to confirm if there was an abscess and have it surgically drained if there was. (No abscess, thank goodness!)
I spent the next 30ish hours in a chair at the Misericordia in Edmonton before being transferred back to St. Paul by ambulance.
The contrast in the care I received was shocking.
In Edmonton, my overarching impression was of overwhelm. The ultrasound I was there for didn’t happen for eight hours because everyone seemed to think I was someone else’s responsibility. Then there was panic to get it done before the technician left for the day.
After my nephew left, I was alone. When I stopped a passing nurse and asked for a blanket or told them I could feel the fever coming back, they said they’d take care of me next, and they’d let my nurse know. But until I knocked a cup of water over because I was shivering so violently, and later fell trying to get up to go to the bathroom, “my nurse” never came.
At one point, a doctor got up in front of the waiting room and urged anyone who could get care elsewhere to leave because it would be at least a 12 hour wait. Someone had a seizure while they were waiting to be triaged and the paramedics who were waiting to collect another patient for a transfer were the ones to respond.
In St. Paul, both before the transfer to Edmonton and after I returned, the nursing staff came to check on me regularly. When the fever medication wore off, they were prompt in administering more. When I started coughing because I had been lying down too long and needed help sitting up, the nurse came before I had found the call button.
Both the doctor on call in the ER and my family doctor came to see me multiple times. I never felt forgotten.
After discharge, I had to go back daily for more IV antibiotics. The nurse who triaged me was on shift again and delighted to see me back “looking so much better today.”
I’m writing a lot of stories about health care these days. It’s not always better in the city.
