Here’s a message — much more than that, a heartfelt story — I received from my friend Wendy Aylworth. She cares very deeply about the direction America is headed regarding health care. Now her family has suffered a tragedy caused by government control of medicine. Here’s her story.
This issue touches close to my heart. Government should not be the entity to decide if you’re worth giving medical care. This Friday I’ll be attending a rally titled “Hands Off My Health Care.” (See Wichita tea party planned to protest government-run health care for details about the Wichita rally.)
Rallies are being held nationwide in every city where a Senator has a local office. Gather outside the building from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm.
I’ll attend in memory of my Cousin Leita, who passed away last Thursday at the age of 29 having been neglected and ignored by the “FREE” Health Care in Canada. They say it’s FREE; it only costs you YOUR LIFE!
My cousins are Canadians. They’ve always told me their health care system is a source of national pride; one they believed in. My cousin is a caring, trusting, compassionate person, and suddenly, acutely, needed help.
My cousin’s 29 year-old daughter became ill and her mother, my first cousin, took her to the hospital emergency department. After checking with the triage desk, Leita, known to them to be a heart patient, waited five and one-half hours in excruciating abdominal pain in the waiting room before she was finally taken back to be examined. By then she was coughing up blood. She was given something for nausea and pain, and then sent home and told to go get an ultrasound at another location the next day.
She couldn’t make it through the night and woke her mother early in the morning. Her mom phoned ahead to ask the emergency room workers whether they were busy at that time, and if they could please take her daughter back to be seen just as soon as they arrived. The response was anger that she would say such an “abusive” thing to them. My cousin brought her daughter to the emergency room and found the waiting room completely empty. But the triage person refused to take her back. She was in extreme abdominal pain and had been battling this “cold” for almost two months. Finally they took her back, felt her abdomen and decided perhaps her liver had a mass in it. Later that day she was given a biopsy and told the results would be back in eight days. My cousin told me it was so wonderful they did the biopsy at the hospital because if her daughter had not been admitted she would have had to go on the waiting list for a biopsy — a three month wait.
An X-ray showed spots on her daughter’s lungs. The personnel told her they suspected liver cancer spread to her lungs.
She was given a bed. Since the specialist was leaving on vacation, Leita would have to wait until July 6th, 2009 for an appointment with him. I urged my cousin to get her daughter to a hospital with an Oncologist immediately, and began my own search for a place. It turned out, due to the Canadian government’s restrictions on hiring specialists, the nearest Oncologist was a two and one-half hour drive away. This would require a transfer to the other medical facility.
The government rules in the Canadian health care system did not allow my cousin to do this. Seeing a specialist even in oil-rich Alberta requires a referral from the family doctor. The family doctor had run liver enzyme tests in November 2008 due to the medication my cousin was on, and had not reported any anomaly in the results. She declined to refer Leita elsewhere, but was very nice about it. My cousin stayed at her daughter’s bedside while I attempted to find some location she could go and be seen by an Oncologist, or some way around the family doctor’s blockade.
My cousin said her daughter could not move and that even trying to speak made her vomit. I asked what they were giving her for nausea and was told when I reached her by phone a couple days later that it was shots.
I asked why they didn’t just give her anti-nausea medication in her IV because I’d recently had surgery under general anesthesia and the new medicine they put in my IV had completely eliminated nausea. Well, it turns out the hospital did not have her on an IV. I guess this saves on having to also put in a catheter in and empty the catheter bag. So my cousin’s daughter was left to dehydrate, while still battling to keep from vomiting — and no IV even though she was in the hospital with a mass in her liver strongly suspected to be malignant. I gathered info from a website on the necessity of an IV and emailed it to my cousin in Canada. The next day, her daughter got an IV.
Two days after this the results of the biopsy came back. It was confirmed to be cancer of the liver just as they thought, and a fast-growing type. Again urging help for her, calling, emailing, messaging people in her province, doing everything I could to try and get her somewhere to see an Oncologist — none of that worked. Not only was my cousin’s daughter’s life on the line, but my cousin explained she herself was not well enough to travel, and was on a wait list for heart care and also actually needed to be at the medical center in Calgary where the ONLY Cardiologist for the province was (and also where the Oncologist was).
But rules are rules and neither could be seen. Logically she should have been taken to the Medical Center in Calgary, hospitalized, and received care. It didn’t happen. The family doctor said my cousin’s daughter could just use the “Cancer Centre” there at the hospital they were already in. No need for a transfer. This is when my cousin discovered there was no Oncologist at all for their Cancer Centre, but only an internist (and he was on vacation). My cousin told me her family doc was a really nice lady. And so my cousin trusted the health system.
Her daughter’s case would go before the “Cancer Board” the week the internist returned from vacation. My cousin’s daughter passed away the night of July 9, 2009. She was only 29.
I hope you will please attend the rally to stop government take over of health care, sign many petitions against any expansion of government powers, and email links to petitions and information on to as many of your friends as possible. Also please phone your senators and Congressional representatives. The number to phone is memorable and fitting for the career politician in Congress: 1-877-SOB-USOB. That toll free line is often busy, so you can also find their direct phone numbers at www.house.gov or www.senate.gov.
I’ve contacted individual citizens in Canada who’ve told me the Province of Alberta has excellent health care. They were comparing it to their own province. So my cousin’s experience was a “GOOD ONE.” This is what we have to look forward to if you let government take control. The federal government already controls 51 cents of every health care dollar spent. The federal government’s controls, red tape, and refusal to allow states, doctors, and we the people our own choices is the TRUE cause of the problems with our health care system.
The Federal government does not allow YOU to take a deduction from your taxes if you purchase your own health insurance. Politicians deliberately set it up so only your employer can take a tax deduction for buying your health insurance for you. With this arrangement politicians guarantee that you’ll live in fear of losing your job AND your health insurance. And, then they know we will have to cry to them to FIX it.
Politicians always set things up so there are more problems that only THEY can fix (and they make you believe it with their propaganda). Nearly every American lives in FEAR of losing their health insurance because this keeps us right where politicians want us. They back us into the corner and extract more from us each time, with each created problem. But they WILL NOT fix the actual problem.
If they’d let you buy your own policy and let you deduct it from your taxes your insurance would be portable. And, for those who cannot afford at the moment to purchase their own policy, politicians could just offer vouchers. In reality there are only 8 million U.S. citizens without their own health insurance policy beyond their own choosing. The 48 million number you’ve been told is an outright lie.
The maize of government regulations is so great that many physicians and nurses have quit seeing patients. They can make a much higher income as expert witnesses or simply in another field. The Congress and the Administration refuse to place caps on medical malpractice awards for various damages not having anything to do with actual medical expenses or future expenses, and juries do not see the full story.
This is your life and the life of your children at stake. First it will be the weak who are “expensed.”
Please attend this rally!
Thanks,
Wendy Aylworth
p.s. If you let government take over your health care there will soon be one growth industry remaining in America: funerals.
Google “We Surround Them” (click here to perform this search), or look to the 912 groups for a rally near you. The Tea Party Patriots Social Network also has information.
You can contact Wendy at MorticianForGov@gmail.com.
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