Over the next two days I first lost my voice and then developed an incredibly painful sore throat. By Sunday, it hadn't gotten better, so I hauled myself up and Ben and I walked over to the local Urgent Care-type clinic in Westmount. It turns out that their doctor had called in sick, so we had to hoof it further downtown to another clinic.
We walked in and this place was totally packed and blasting a radio station playing what I presume were the best hits of the 70's, 80's, and early 90's. The line to the counter was so long that it kind of blocked off the entranceway, so the sick people coming in had to squeeze by the sick people who were already in line. It wasn't a disaster area, but it looked like a crowded non-emergency waiting room, the kind of place that if you walked into in the States you'd know you could be there upwards of 4 or 5 hours.
"Okay," I thought, "if this is terrible I have to be honest about it and tell people on the blog in the interests of semi-journalistic semi-integrity."
As you're probably aware, one thing I was interested in checking out while I was in Canada was the healthcare system. I'm in favor of single-payer healthcare, where doctors and hospitals and such do their thing and the government takes the role of the insurance company and takes on the part of the bill that they're responsible for, as well as negotiating rates and all that.
Have you ever NOT had health insurance? Do you know what that's like?
I wrote a big long bit here describing what it's like to not have health insurance, but then I erased it because a) I'm not going to convince you of anything new and b) if you ever didn't have health insurance, you probably don't want to think about what that was/is like. I'm sorry I brought it up.
Anyway, because I didn't have health insurance for a particularly desperate portion of my life, I think that the world would be a better place if people did have health insurance. I'm willing to entertain something less-than-fabulous, or something half-broken, or something with death panels; I don't care.
So here I am, sitting in this germy waiting room in some of the worst pain I can remember, and I think, "Yeah, this might end up being terrible."
So we sat there and paid our $120 cash (we're not on the gov't insurance just yet so we have to use Ben's work insurance, which means getting reimbursed after the fact). Ben went across the street and got me a smoothie from a Tim Horton's. I wrote him little sad notes on the back of a pap smear pamphlet they had lying around.To my surprise, we were really only there for maybe half an hour before my name was called. I went back, hopped up on the bench, he took my temperature, asked me a few basic questions, wrote me a prescription, and I was on my way. Took maybehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif...4 minutes?
I went back out--Ben was surprised to see me so soon!--and we got the prescription and caught a cab home because we'd already done so much running around.
In retrospect, now that I'm not deathly ill, I am okay with the experience I had at the clinic. Doctor didn't actually tell me what he thought I was sick with, he just gave me some antibiotics and got me out the door. This isn't particularly awesome healthcare, but I also didn't have to sit in the waiting room for a good 4 hours until he saw me. All in all, it got the job done and that was good enough for me.
We went home and Ben made me lasagne the way I like, with bechamel sauce. Hasn't been until today, really, that I've felt human again, which means I was out for nearly a week. Of course since Ben was taking care of me and I wasn't doing my usual around-the-house stuff, there may or may not still be a bit of evidence lying around...
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