A Week That Was
Just over a week ago, I received a letter from my GP that he is shutting down his practice. Add me to the list of millions of Canadians without basic medical care. I actually haven’t had that for a long time here, but that’s in the lap of cynical and burnt out doctors, which is another post altogether.
No, you can’t simply find another GP here. Their practices are all closed. Patients are told to contact the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons. The College maintains a list that is always out of date by at least 6 months. Patients get the list, which has hundreds of physicians names on it, only to be told by every office they call that the practice has been closed for many months now. The College, by the way, advocates for their peers …the physicians and surgeons. No one advocates for the patients. Supposedly one can write to the Minister of Health.
As recently as 10 years ago, if you went to specialists, any one of them could direct you to a good GP. Today they all shake their heads and say, “Not any more”.
After receiving and trying to digest that news, I next faced this blog going into meltdown. It was shut down for several days, due supposedly to a server migration that made the mess worse. Some hosts should not be offering Linux on Apache combined with open source packages that they don’t know a great deal about.
The upshot is that I have a new host and re-installed yesterday. Some data, such as categories, didn’t survive the import, so it will take a few days to get through the archives.
If you get pinged from one of my old posts …again… please say that you forgive me!
Now I’ve also lost my voice, although I can whisper. The best thing I can say about this is thank goodness it went after I made my new hosting arrangements, and now I have a ‘voice’ again for musing and meandering on things that matter much to me.
WordPress …je t’adore. It is better the second time around.
BlueHost makes a big difference too. Installing and setting up the second time around has been so much easier I feel like I’ve moved to another planet. I even got everything validating within hours yesterday. I’m sure there’ll be new twists and quirks to deal with, especially as I add plugins, but the past month has also proven to be a great learning experience.
If you’re a returning reader, thank you for your faith.
If you’re in Toronto, do you happen to know a GP with good hearing?
October 25th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
Writing as someone who just today received a bill for US$800 worth of ER care only to discover that at least one quarter of it looked kinda superfluous, I suppose I can feel a tiny bit of your pain.
On reflection, I wonder how many people go into medicine anymore on account of the public service aspect.
The whole train of thought is, in all frankness, irritating as hell.
My reason for commenting when I first got here, meanwhile, was to direct you to http://snarkymumbles.blogspot.com/ which is mine.
October 25th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
Ouch.
superfluous = insurance company legal fees
Doctors without borders, maybe?
I’m so glad you did come by and post that link, and I’ve already left a comment on your first post. (at least I think I did …Blogger isn’t always friendly if you don’t use a Google account). It’s good to see you out here joining us!