Motivated Motion

20 Days........And I am not Myself
And Find Out How I Got F'd Over by Ontario Healthcare!


My surgery was a piece of cake, and my recovery remarkable....yet......I don't feel too great.
Twenty days ago I had my right ovary removed in a two surgery, triple procedure.
I did really well right after the surgery and I healed up great too, yet I seemed to be plagued by a strange fatigue. Until the last couple of days I thought it was just me being older plus me also having my second surgery this winter as the reason I felt so low, but I am thinking now that it might be an infection....I just don't know if it is surgical or perhaps sinus.

My suspicions red-flagged when my blood sugar suddenly went up right after a week of barely keeping it up enough, so I will be heading for some tests today to see what is up, then I will see the Dr. on Friday to get a check once my test results come back.

I think that it is actually a residual infection from a bad environmental allergy attack I have been having all week, but I have to be a good girl and cover all the bases before I relax.

The fatigue I have is so bad that if I increase my activity level just a little my whole body will react with huge sighs. It is crazy! And yet I still have the same trouble as ever falling asleep, so I sit like always, up late at night on the computer, trying to stay out of trouble. LOL

Right now I am frustrated. I want to be training more for the walk for womens' cancer, and I want to be gearing up to re-open the shop, but I just don't have the energy.

So I think I will be playing it week-by-week for a bit longer, as I don't want to get the shop in full-swing, only to have to stop again because of a set-back. As much as it pains me to keep the shop closed longer, I think I need to really have a serious look at my situation and not rush myself back into the hospital because I went back to the fast pace of life too soon.

I am still not monitoring my feeds or emails too closely, so if you really need to get my attention to something, or you need a reply from me, I suggest you call and leave a message. Otherwise please be patient......................

We had to get nursing care for this recovery, as with the abdominal surgery and the frozen shoulder I am litterally trapped in bed when I wake up. So the nurse comes in and helps me get up and monitors my first meds and blood sugar stuff while I am groggy. She helps me get showered and dressed and keeps me safe in the first two hours of my day. I am not on any pain meds in the day, but my meds from bedtime take a while to wear off, and they make me forgetful at the crucial time when I need to remember that I took my diabetic meds, or checked my sugar. I think going under general anesthetic made the forgetfulness more prominent each morning, and I hope this situation is only temporary.

We never did get CCAC. Basically the socialized homecare that was created to lessen the burdon of recovery time on the hospital, and bring the patient to homecare right away is now gone the way of the D0do. Now CCAC mandate as of December 2009 is only to provide homecare if you are over 65 and or near dead, and if you are dying they pass you off to hospice. CCAC tells you that Chats will help Aquired Brain Injury Patients with rides to therapy and care, but this too is untrue. Chats new mandate is only to help senior citizens now and no one else.

So what does this mean? It means that the Ontario health care system is no longer providing extended homecare to regular post surgical patients even though the Hospital system is still under the expectation that EVERYONE will get homecare for recovery at home-because the Hospital system has not made any provisional changes to their discharge program for post surgical care.

There is a CCAC points system and now some Senior Citizens would also not meet the points criteria for the new mandate, so they too will get no care.

Who gets homecare now? Refugees, Welfare Recipients, and Senior Citizens that have no savings. Who loses? The middle class family with two adults working making a decent wage for over 25yrs, or Senior Citizens that worked damn hard for their money and did a good job of saving money for retirement

We- the middle class get F'd over again. Almost 50 yrs combined of my husband and I contributing to the Provincial system to the maximum the Province can take ( with which Fed and Provincial taxes takes a total of 62% of our total gross income ). But those who did not contribute because they sat in Ontario housing forever and only worked long enough to collect the minimum unemployment benefit and were never productive members of society- and spent all their free time at the bar or the race track or in prison pass the points review from CCAC and get everything on a platter!

I retired from my great career for medical reasons and all I get is a CPP benefit of $564.72 a month. The part of my medications not covered by insurance is over that per month!
For years and years we paid the maximum anyone can pay into the system. I never even took a baby bonus or GST cheque or child tax credit EVER, and I get screwed by my own Province when I get sick. My husband and Sons are exhausted from trying to help me more and more since September when I injured my shoulder and then through the December and April surgeries, and I got nothing and no aid from an agency we have had to pay to through our taxes all these years to receive no benefit from them.

Guaranteed, when I get my energy back and I going to be the loudest one-ovaried bitch to ever walk into Queen's Park, and I am going to become the thorn in healthcare's side. As far as I am concerned CCAC is in abuse of patients coming through the hospital system since they changed their mandate, as there is no provision in place to do a step-down of care for a patient who is sent home within 24hrs of surgery from everything to ovary removal, cancer surgery, plastic surgery etc., and up until Dec 2009 there was.

Hear this! I had a cancer excision vulvectomy on Dec 2, 2009 and I didn't even qualify for an Occupational Therapist assessment after my surgery ( and homecare says all cancer patients get care-bullshit!). I was put on a waiting list from January until my second gynecological surgery in April 2010, when because of my abdominal surgery which only successfully removed one ovary when the removal of both was necessary. So I finally got off the OT waiting list only to continue to stay on the RPN requirement waiting list.

Who ever heard of someone having surgery and then be on a waiting list for post surgical care!? WTF!
When someone has surgery the need for homecare is immediate, it isn't dynamic! And if you require assistance to get up or take care of hygiene it is a NO BRAINER that the care needs to be established and in place at the hospital before the patient leaves. Now the hospital assessor comes and then says that they will get the ball rolling which means they will pass you off to yet another person who wastes an hour of your time asking the same questions as the other, yet carefully logs all of your answers into their own computer ( so they can get paid for wasting your time!). All of the assessors are more than happy to spend an hour with you asking about your inabilities because they get paid! Not because they are going to help. Nope...no help....just more fuckery to really mess with the patient and their exhausted family, and make yet another contact you can call to get no help.

So what did I get for 4 one hour pre-assessments?(BASICALLY SOMEONE GOT PAID 4 TIMES TO FILL OUT THE SAME QUESTIONNAIRE) I got tired.....
I also got an occupational therapist to come to my home to help me figure out how to

A) get out of bed without the risk of pain that will cause me to black out [which I have done 8 times in the last three months-and that was only counting the times I blacked-out and hit the floor. Many -a- day I black-out 4 times in bed trying to get up ]

B)get a bra on -the only answer to this was no bra, or a nurse as the tool to help is no longer available

C) wipe my ass without blacking-out cuz I can only do it with my bad arm......and that reach around for a sparkle clean sphincter causes a nerve pain so bad I will hit the floor writhing in pain, trying to breathe through the pain while swearing the worst loudest stuff ever!

So this pain issue with the shoulder escalated after the first Surgery on December 2nd, and I was wait-listed for that OT until April 9th when she came! How the fuck does CCAC think it is ok to put a patient through that!?

So what did I get from the OT?......nothin
I got suggestions of stuff I could buy and try! Yep.....buy. And I could not even order it through her. My care person had to leave my side when I was still recovering to go find medical supply stores that would have the stuff. Then he could order it.
So we had to spend a lot of money to get me some aids, and the ass wiper is mediocre but can't be returned-obviously and cost almost $60.00! We had to rent a shower rail and seat, and we had to order a bed ladder which has apparently arrived at the supply store, but I can't drive to get it and my care givers(Hubby and Sons) are now back working so they don't get fired from their real-life jobs, and now cannot pick up until the weekend.
The OT also suggested we ask our personal medical insurance about private nursing coverage.

We got it!

Yep we got private nursing coverage supplied by Bayshore Nursing services. I get an RN or RPN for two hours a day, 5 days a week from a minimum of $25,000.00 to up to a Million dollars in coverage per year at 90%. It sounds fabulous!
Clinker is: I have to pay the service out of my own pocket first and then submit the paperwork to get 90% of it back. I am gonna assume it will be a horrible amount like $200.00 an hour!

That way of paying would be fantastic if I had not been medically retired since 2005 collecting my pittance from CPP exhausting all of our savings on previous medical care, physio therapy for my stupid shoulder, foot orthotics, prescription shoes, CPAP machines and supplies, diabetic meds, maintenance and supplies, stupid parking at hospitals like Southlake, Sunnybrook, Woman's College Hospital, Toronto General Hospital, Scarborough General Hospital, Toronto Western Hospital where I end up paying $18.00- $32.00 dollars to park each day, for monthly Specialist Appointments, medical procedures and surgeries.
And... we have two kids in post secondary Education to boot!

Could you do it? Do you have enough money in the bank to pay the bills our socialized medicine does not provide for any longer? Could you pay thousands of dollars of nursing fees out of your pocket first?
Does your current mode of Medical Plan cover all your meds? If your plan didn't cover a med you needed and had no alternative to get and it was $300.00 a month out of your pocket could you pay it? Could you continue to pay it for 5 or more years like me?

Since 2005 we have had to utilize over $200,000.00 of our savings because of my medical retirement. It is like the past 25years of savings never occurred. So our retirement will be some locked investments and equity from the house....that's it. It is that "Son-of-A-Bitchin', kick-you-in-the-ass-kind of, life-sucking" event that will definitely make you cynical

Sucked freekin dry!

I thought the benefit to working hard and honest and paying all the taxes was to have some benefit when I need it. Well I am very unsatisfied with the health services I have paid for within 62% of our yearly gross income going to taxes- ever since my first full-time job after graduating college. I never even got maternity pay, or baby bonus or GST or Child Tax Credit. We just paid and paid and got no socialized benefit at all!

I want a refund! And I will become the biggest thorn in the side of Ontario health care until they give me my refund! I have spent 46 years in gal training to throw me at their phone lines, and emails. I will become fucking loud! If you don't think your life could handle a huge hit to finances because of medical care issues, and there is no way you could afford to subsidize your life from your savings in a medical emergency then you need to get fucking loud too!

Ontario Healthcare has failed to provide me with the level of care I required for quality of life issues like hygiene, mobility and medicating for a chronic illness BECAUSE WE EARNED A GOOD HONEST LIVING AND ARE MIDDLE CLASS, so I want a refund for all of the years I paid into that service with an expected high rate of care and got zero care. I didn't get what I paid for......I want a refund!

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