Chagal4's Blog

Well it was a gift wasn’t it? Somebody phoned up and told us…it wasn’t as if we went looking. It’s early in the campaign…we’re more into…you know…getting the message out. So, no…I don’t think anybody looked into it too deeply, we were all too busy. It was some junior staffer is what I think…that was the way it was…some volunteer kid just put it out on the wire. We looked into it afterward and I think that’s what we found. But no…no it wasn’t an ad per se…more of a note, if I can say that. Well, yes, it ran several times…and I can see how some people might have thought it was an ad…and then the media picked it up and sort of ran with…you know …made it more than it was…some junior staffer. No it isn’t our kind of politics normally…We run on the issues …always have…but this thing…well you can’t…you can’t have people like that in office…really, can you?  No…no…of course we can’t prove it…yet…but you know how these things are…it was reported to us and we just couldn’t take a chance that it wasn’t true. And that other part …no…no…that other part about, you know…well that didn’t come from us at all…not our style…come on…we don’t go around commenting on things like that…the small size of his equipment…who uses language like that? And even if it’s true…that and the incest thing…no, it has nothing to do with the issues in this race…and like I said …it didn’t come from us. I’m sure it will all come out…you can’t keep a thing like that under the table these days…you media guys are too sharp…but not from us…that stuff. All above board…that’s the way you have to run these things. Keep it clean I always say and let the voter decide…and nine times out of ten the voter is going to see that integrity. We have it…We have it…and maybe the other guy has some things…you know, let’s face it…there’s always a thing or two that you don’t know about the other guy…and when they come out…people can see what’s what. I never believed for a minute that business about the latex suit and his secretary and the great dane…Where do people get that stuff?…Just vicious…that is. Never believed it myself. No…you never know… Well I laughed , of course…it was just ridiculous…wearing black rubber and a pink skirt, was it? Absurd! Probably some party prank. Must be hard for him to keep his mind on the campaign with all this going on. I had a drink with him a couple of weeks before this all came out…he likes a drink, you know…damn nice fellow…he looked a little tired I thought. Of course he was having two to my one…I like to keep my mind clear, you know. It must have been nagging at him even then…it hadn’t come out yet…damn junior staffers…we all have to use them…so enthusiastic, and great kids…you know. Well we’ll get to the bottom of that I can tell you…but I could see that some thing was on his mind. I told him…you can’t keep things bottled up…these campaigns can be rough. Things come at you from any direction. I told him to pay it no mind…don’t give them the satisfaction…whoever they are. Well one of my campaign guys said “What if it’s true?” and I shut that down right away. Never true…these things. He was pretty upset about it I heard…as I would be…as you would be…No..no…nothing to do with us. I was telling my wife Joyce…twenty wonderful years…yes thanks…I was just telling her…it was Sunday and we were coming out of church with the kids…yes…all grown up now…yes, well they were on the bus last week…Family values…that’s the thing…Oh yes..so I was saying to Joyce that these awful rumours and things pop up in campaigns…come at you from who-knows-where. Hasn’t happened to me, thank goodness…no…no…well people know better don’t they…there’s nothing to find…let ’em look, I said, and if they say anything then it will be all lies won’t it?…nothing there…so they don’t get any traction . Him? Oh No…no..I don’t think he’d dare…stuff like that? Glass houses …you know… glass houses…I mean really! Can you  see it..him and his little dick and his ridiculous rubber suit? there are probably pictures of that stupid pink skirt. Hell…No..Pardon my language but no way that sleazy little fucker would come over with stuff like that…O.K…No ..No..Time’s up I see…That’s enough now. I just wanted to set the record straight. None of this came from us…and you can quote me on that. B.C.

We have an election coming up in Canada in a few days…and like many elections in the past few years we have been besieged by vicious attack ads filled with malice and innuendo. They are designed to agitate and polarize rather than educate and inform voters. It’s time we let candidates know…enough is enough.

Before I start this rant I want to say that I have enormous respect for health care workers. I know they have an increasingly difficult job to do in most places and I know too that hospital administrators face the difficult choices of where to allocate scarce resources. The population is aging and with that aging people find their bodies breaking down…making bigger demands for care strategies. Governments in Canada and the U.S. have insisted on cutting taxes to stimulate the economy and incidentally to buy the votes. In a lot of ways it couldn’t come at a worse time. The income gap between the incredibly wealthy and the working people is beyond huge…and the proportional taxation is practically criminal. Canada has what we call a universal health care system …meaning that practically anyone can get into a hospital for treatment and their costs are covered. It is becoming difficult to maintain but it is holding. Wait times for surgery are getting longer in spite of major efforts to reduce them. Emergency rooms are virtually never empty. There aren’t enough doctors and amazingly cost cutting choices in a hospital here has the administration cutting twenty five staff…not administrators…but nurses and care givers! A few days ago I found myself in Emergency at a local hospital with severe pain in my abdomen. I didn’t know what it was and I was spooked. I’ve spent enough time in hospitals in the past six months. It turned out to be a kidney stone and I’m not writing to whine about that. It hurts…it will be dealt with. When I got to Emergency with my own true love…we found that we would have to wait four to five hours to see a doctor. Doesn’t sound like much does it? Four to five hours. The waiting rooms (plural) were packed with people in varying stages of anxiety and agony along with concerned and frightened family or friends. I got some medication for my pain and settled in to wait…closer to seven hours. I looked around the waiting room…there was nothing much to do otherwise and it struck me that the whole design of these places was stupidly wrong. It seems to me that health care ought to begin in the waiting room. I don’t mean that doctors should be working on patients there but the space ought to contribute to improving the patient. I’ve been in dozens of waiting rooms over the years and every one of them was an architectural dead zone. Money and design time is spent on operating rooms, treatment spaces, board rooms, class-rooms, administrative offices, laboratories and specialty spaces. Waiting rooms are neutral spaces connected to an intake kiosk . The are stocked with cheap and durable furniture that gets more traffic than your average taxi. I’ve never seen a comfortable chair in any of them…in any event, spending four hours in pain on almost any thinly padded chair is likely to produce ass paralysis in the toughest people. We endure it because we have no choice.  I think waiting rooms need to be redesigned as part of the health care protocol. Furniture should be specifically designed for easing pain and easy cleaning. The rooms need to be brighter, cleaner, and designed to absorb and reduce noise and aggravation. There is clearly little chance that waiting times will improve dramatically over the next few years. If these hard minded right wing governments have their way…only those who can pay will have access…but there will be more than enough of them to fill waiting rooms. In the short term existing waiting rooms could and should be retrofitted …brighter lighting, better paint choices, some acoustic tiles  and a serious search for some furniture that belongs in a waiting room. This is a critical piece of the puzzle. You’re sick, or in pain, you’re scared, you don’t know what’s going to happen to you…you’re sitting in room full of sick people in a chair that has been continuously occupied by sick people who may have contagious illnesses. Nobody washed or sprayed that chair before you landed in it…and nobody wiped it when you left it. That doesn’t mean they’re never cleaned and it doesn’t mean that you’ll catch some virus or bacteria from being there. But the chances are better than they would be if you were walking in the park and it doesn’t inspire confidence as you’re sitting there watching a guy vomiting into a bowl in the corner chair. So chairs that are upholstered in some easily sanitised material and that have a design that can give some comfort to pained people for four hours or more.  But the key piece of the puzzle has to be the “active waiting” room. There needs to be waiting room staff. Maybe not fully trained nurses but aides with some training and they need to be there to provide information, let people know what’s going on…how long their wait will be…how close they are to the top of the list… to provide water or reading material…TO SHOW CONCERN for the patient and any family or friends…bring blankets. Act as intermediaries with intake nurses…alert them of increased pain in patients or emerging crises. These shouldn’t just be inspired volunteers (although anything is better than nothing) but trained and paid staff whose function is understood and integrated into the care strategy of the hospital. If this could be done…I believe that patients would be less anxious, more communicative and better able to assist in their own diagnosis when the finally see the doctor…and perhaps reducing the time and difficulty in dealing with upset patients. Moreover, providing some assurance and concern in the waiting room would enable family and friends to get past their own anxiety and act as more supportive strength for the patient. These are positive outcomes. Am I asking for a Cadillac version of hospitals? Hell yes…I’d like there to be Cadillac schools and Cadillac governments too…but everything is relative. I know that these aren’t choices that cash strapped hospitals will make…I just want to see some new thinking…some steps in the direction of overall care…I want want waiting spaces to be caring spaces. If you can’t reduce the wait times…at least try to make the waits more bearable.