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Alta states: Of hospitals and hockey rinks

Getting our priorities straight
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"The scourge of obesity now exceeds the scourge of smoking."

- Dr Mark Tremblay

 

Yeah baby. Got out of there just in time. It's not that they were doing a bad job or anything. The surgery was successful. The doctors and nurses did what they had to do. It's just, well, spending time in a modern medical factory remains one of the most de-humanizing experiences of 21 st century life.

Know what I mean? It was brutal. And doubly so as a recent widower. With no real advocate to look out for my best interests - and no one to look over the doctor's shoulder to make sure I was OK - I was left to look out for myself. And frankly, I was pretty lousy at it. It's pretty funny to be in morphine la-la land while being lectured on all the things you need to do when you return home. Funny that is, until you get home and realize you can't remember a thing they told you...

Anyway, that's all behind me now. I'm finally through the crux. I'm getting stronger. The future looks bright again. But things got really dark before the lights returned.

The community of friends and family that pulled together to get me through the nightmare of last week proved once again how much of a fiction the "rugged individual" concept is. Truly. I couldn't have survived the experience of coming home on my own. Deathly ill from some mysterious drug reaction (featuring the most severe withdrawal symptoms I've ever encountered) and still reeling from total knee replacement surgery, I was utterly helpless for nearly a week. Couldn't even get out of bed to go to the bathroom.

Lucky for me I had angels on my side. Without my indomitable crew of helpers to feed me and change my sheets and empty my urinal, I would have been up the proverbial creek. As it was, I think they all got a pretty big scare anyway. It was touch and go there for a while.

But enough moaning. The sun is shining. The garden is magnificent. And Stanley Cup fever has taken hold of the land.

Which can't help but get me thinking. I mean, maybe it's just me. Or maybe it's just because of my recent hospital stay. But doesn't it seem strange to you that we pay seven-figure salaries to overgrown boys playing games with pucks and sticks when the most experienced nurse in the country earns a wage at which a fourth-liner on the worst NHL team in the league would sneer at in contempt?

Where the hell are our priorities? As a recent hospital victim, I can tell you that the only person on your side during your whole meat-factory incarceration is the nurse assigned to you. Suffering 12-hour shifts (from 7 to 7 each day or night), struggling with an insane work load that includes every menial job possible, and squeezed between penny-pinching managers and needy patients, the corps of men and women who represent the modern nursing movement in today's industrial "healthcare" facilities are the ones who truly make or break your hospital sojourn.

It's not the doctors. They're too busy preening. And it's definitely not the administrators. They're too busy having meetings. When all is said and done, there's only one person on your side during your hospital stay. And that's spelled N-U-R-S-E.

Now I can't talk about anybody else's experience. But in my case, I got to know six different nurses during the five days I spent at VGH. And they all blew my mind. Polite, cheerful, knowledgeable, hard-working - and truly concerned with my well-being - these six professionals did everything in their power to make my stay as comfortable and as painless as possible. And they definitely understood the paradoxes of the modern hospital experience. "Get out of here as quickly as possible," one of them warned me sotto voce. "If you stay too long in here, you just get sicker..."

Yeah. No kidding. Still, it really makes ya wonder. How can we live with ourselves paying obscene sums to Peter Pans playing games when we constantly balk at paying real living wages to the people who are actually making a difference in society?

Yeah. Yeah. I know. Market forces will prevail, yada, yada, yada. But this is clearly a case where old Adam Smith's invisible hand is definitely scratching its butt...

Let's put it another way. How much would your environment change if all the hockey players in the world decide to stop playing the game? Probably a few empty evenings to fill. Maybe a book or two to read instead. Maybe even a little loss of weight for lack of beer and chips. But really, let's face it - your life would pretty much go on as usual.

Now let's think of another case. What would happen to your environment if all the nurses in the world decided to stop working? Can you even imagine such a scenario? It would be bedlam. And the death toll would spiral. Old people left to their own devices. Sick people without anybody to turn to. Injured children unable to be treated. Harsh toke, dude.

So why in the world don't we recognize that reality a little more in our daily lives? Why is it, when we hear nurses advocating for better working conditions or higher wages or more time off that we regularly put them down as greedy and selfish? I mean, if there's anybody greedy and selfish, it's surely today's overly pampered professional athlete.

Which brings me yet again to the much-ballyhooed Own the Podium concept. Now that Canadians have become winner-obsessed, it seems totally okay to invest public funds in helping our athletes achieve greatness on the world sporting stage. Don't get me wrong here. I have absolutely nothing against an overweight 40-year-old dashing down a multi-million dollar track in his long underwear piloting his penile substitute to fame and fortune against a half dozen other competitive teams in the world. As far as I'm concerned he can bobsled as long as they'll let him race.

Where I balk, however, is underwriting his and his family's lifestyle with my hard-earned taxes when we can't even provide professionally-trained phys ed teachers to elementary school kids in British Columbia!

Isn't that called star-fugging? Isn't that called penny-wise and pound-foolish? I mean, jesus-looeysus, at a time when our young kids are more at risk from obesity and obesity-related illness than at any other time in our history, what are we doing taking money from the grassroots and handing it out to people, who frankly, are pursuing incredibly selfish and self-absorbed goals?

Let's try that exercise again. What if all the athletes in the world went on strike? Big deal. Now, what if all the teachers walked out? Huh-oh...

On my recent visit to southern Mexico, I was introduced to a class of Canadians that I rarely encounter in my very active, very Whistler-typical lifestyle. And it really gave me a sobering kick in the ass.

Overweight and out-of-shape, fat-dimpled and unhealthy and totally uncomfortable with their bodies, these southern visitors had trouble getting up from their sun chairs and waddling to the beach without breaking into a sweat. And their children? It made me cry. Countless were the kids who sat in the shade and played with their video games - rather than venture forth into the ocean.

No muscle definition. Bad coordination. No physical literacy to speak of. These are the Canadians of the future. And it doesn't bode well for the ski business, I can tell you. But don't get me started on that rant...

Still, it really makes a person think. Do we really want to create a two-tiered world in Canada? Do we really want to create an environment where 99 per cent of the population watches passively while 1 per cent acts? Is that really what 21 st century Canada is all about?

Call me naïve. Call me romantic. But I've always believed that a country's elite sporting program should simply be the natural extension of a national health philosophy that celebrates cradle-to-grave wellness. In other words, sport shouldn't be consumed. It should be lived on a daily basis! "Healthy Body in Healthy Mind" is not just another cliché. It's a way of life. And not just for some, but for everyone!

Now if we could only convince our political leaders of that little detail, maybe we might create champions the right way... from the bottom up. Don't you think?