Laura's Mommy Blog

Archive for the ‘Health’ Category

Seems like the amount of H1N1 cases are going down because they have decreased the amount of clinics for patients from 15 to 7 on the island of Montreal. If you have flu-like symptoms and you feel like you need medical attention, here is where you can go for medical help:

CSSS de l’Ouest-de-l’Île
Clinique-réseau Médistat
4965, rue St-Pierre
Pierrefonds
514 624-4774
Monday to Friday : 8 h 30-20 h 30
Saturday and Sunday : 8 h-16 h

Clinique-réseau Statcare
175, chemin Stillview
Bureau 104
Pointe-Claire
514 697-9976
Monday to Friday : 7 h 30-21 h
Saturday and Sunday : 8 h-16 h

CSSS d’Ahuntsic et Montréal-Nord
Clinique médicale Ahuntsic
241, rue Fleury Ouest
514 382-0062
Monday to Friday : 8 h-20 h
Saturday and Sunday : 8 h-16 h

CSSS Saint-Léonard et Saint-Michel
Clinique-réseau Saint-Michel
3355, rue Jarry Est
514 374-8223
Monday to Friday: 8 h-20 h
Saturday and Sunday : 8 h-16 h

CSSS du Sud-Ouest–Verdun
CLSC de Ville-Émard–
Côte-St-Paul
6161, rue Laurendeau
514 766-0546
7 days a week : 8 h-16 h

CSSS Lucille-Teasdale
CLSC Olivier-Guimond
5810, rue Sherbrooke Est
514 255-2365
7 days a week : 8 h-16 h

CSSS de la Montagne
Clinique-réseau Westmount Square
1, Westmount Square
Niveau Mail Commercial, Bureau C-230
Westmount
514 934-2334
7 days a week : 9 h-16 h

For further information you can:

- visit www.pandemiequebec.qc.ca

- call Services Quebec at 514-644-4545

ER Waiting Room

A hospital is a place you go to for help, but at the same time it is a dreadful place to visit. When you are sick, going to the ER is the last thing you want to do. I’ve heard way too many stories of people waiting for hours on end in the ER. I think there are some people that take space in the ER that shouldn’t be there. Some people may not always realize whether their case is serious enough to warrant an ER visit, so they take the chance and go anyway. It’s an ongoing problem here in Canada and it doesn’t look like it will improve anytime soon.

Apart from the ER, I have not heard too many complaints about hospital care, but today I read an article that shocked me. It was about a Winnipeg man, Monty Vann, who had brain surgery to remove a tumor. Vann is 60 years old and was going in for a very risky surgery to his brain. The surgery was considered risky because he also has an underlying heart condition. He had the surgery and everything went well and he was doing well with recovery. The hospital then told him he was okay to go home, but get this – they made this decision TWO days after surgery. Are you serious? They wouldn’t discharge me from the hospital when I had my c-section any earlier than four days! This guy had staples keeping his head together, and he was still bleeding a bit behind his ear, and they wanted to send him home. WTF? His family did not agree with this and he ended up staying in hospital for an additional three days before he finally went home, or at least tried to go home. His brother was driving him home five days after his surgery, and he had a stroke in the car before he even made it home. Now, he is paralyzed on one side of his body, unable to speak, and is unresponsive.

Brain surgery seems pretty serious to me and I would think that medical professionals would want to keep a patient like that around for observation. It seems very scary that they would let someone like that go home. I don’t even work in the medical field and I know that that is the wrong thing to do! Who made this decision? These are supposed to be people you trust, people that you believe are looking out for your well-being.

I have my own little hospital horror story that I can share with you. When Ava was five weeks old, I went to the ER because I had been having these terrible attacks of pain in my abdomen and chest ever since I had given birth to her. The visit went pretty quick and the doctor decided not to run any blood tests because he was sure that from talking to me that I had acid reflux. He told me to take Maylox and go home. Two weeks later, and the attacks were continuing. One day I was having an attack, and it was going on the fifth hour of being in excruciating pain. I decided that I needed to go back to the ER. I arrived at the ER and saw the triage nurse within a short period of time. She could see in my chart that I had been to the ER a few weeks prior and what the doctor had diagnosed me with. I tried to explain to her that I had a newborn at home that I was breastfeeding, hoping that this would help move me through faster because my daughter needed me home so she could eat. Let me tell you that this nurse was a complete moron! She took my information, asked me a few questions, and then sent me back out into the waiting room. Hours were passing by and the pain was getting even worse.

Lakeshore General Hospital

After a few hours I decided that I was going to go back and talk to the triage nurse. The pain was so intense that I couldn’t possibly tolerate it for much longer, I needed attention fast. I went in to see her and tried to explain to her that the pain was very bad. I was even crying, and that is rare for me. She asked me on a scale of 1 to 10 what my level of pain was and I quickly answered 10. I later found out that she never even wrote this information down in my chart. Had she done that, I would of been seen by a doctor a lot quicker. Again, she sent me back out into the waiting room. As I was sitting in the waiting room folded over in pain, other patients could see how bad it was and one lady even told me how bad she felt and she hoped I would get some help soon. The pain started to get too much for my body to handle, so now I started vomiting. After two vomiting sessions, I decided to go back to the triage nurse once again.

I explained to her that I had started throwing up and I pleaded with her to help me. I could not take it any longer! This woman had zero sympathy for me. I can’t believe she was a nurse. It was obvious that she was totally in the wrong profession. She listened to what I had to say, but still sent me back into the waiting room to sit and wait. Five hours had already passed by now.

The fourth time I went back to the triage nurse, she decided she didn’t want to talk to me anymore, so instead she sent in her head nurse. Now, if I thought the triage nurse was bad, this one was even worse. She was like the super bitch, she even looked scary. Again, she told me there was nothing they could do at the time. They had no available stretchers for me and I was going to have to wait.

I really don’t think they had any intentions of calling me in soon. The nurses had looked at my charts and figured I was suffering from acid reflux, which is not that serious, and just brushed it off. I tried to explain to the nurses that this diagnosis was made without any testing, so the doctor could possibly have been wrong. The pain was very intense, but I think they made an assumption that I was someone with a very low threshold of pain. I assure you that I am not exaggerating when I tell you that this was painful.When I came to find out what problem I really had, I would later learn that it is a condition that causes one of the worse pain episodes that a person can have, right below the pain of kidney stones.

After the sixth hour of sitting in waiting room hell, the head nurse came out into the waiting room to go into the nurses’ break room. I was sitting right outside this room and I was folded over in pain right at that moment and I didn’t even notice her there. She finally realized that my case was more serious than she had thought. She looked at me and said “Okay, you, come with me.” Finally I was being taken into the ER for treatment! They took some blood for tests, put an IV in my arm for fluids and told me I would have to stay the night until they got my results.I was fine with anything, as long as the pain went away. For some reason, as soon as I had laid down on the stretcher, the pain started to lessen. If only they could of done that hours ago!

The next morning, the doctor came to give me my diagnosis – acute pancreatitis. It was caused by gallstones that I had developed during my pregnancy. Now, had the doctor I had seen two weeks prior run some simple blood tests while I was there, this could of all been avoided. Unfortunately, I was now looking at a 10 day stay in the hospital with an upcoming surgery to look forward to.

I can’t help but feel like I was treated very poorly in the ER. I was literally dying in the waiting room crying out for help, and nobody was doing anything about it. It’s really sad that this is the kind of health care system that we depend on to save our lives. I will say that the care I received for the following 10 days in hospital was excellent. I ended up with an amazing surgeon and the nurses that took care of me were more than I could ask for, but getting there was a difficult road.

This isn’t only a problem in Canada because I have heard numerous stories of patients in the US dying in hospital waiting for care. A few months before my ordeal, a woman in Los Angeles died while waiting in the ER waiting room. She was bleeding from the mouth and in extreme pain, but the staff ignored her, and after 45 minutes she died. In 2008, in a Brooklyn hospital, a woman died after collapsing on an ER waiting room floor. She laid there, face-down, for an hour before anyone came to check if she was okay. Other patients, hospital staff, security guards, all ignored her as she lied on the floor dying.

I just don’t seem to understand how these things happen. It’s one thing when you hear it on the news, and you think to yourself, “Wow, that’s tragic.” You never in a million years think that it could happen to you. Well, I was definitely ignored by hospital staff when I was clearly in need of medical attention. It really opened my eyes to the problems they have in hospitals. It saddens me to hear stories like Mr.Vann’s because it just reminds me that the problem still exists and probably always will.

Jillian Michaels Quickstart

I’m sitting here watching The Biggest Loser, and I am in awe at the amount of work these contestants do to get healthy. I love watching the show, I find it very inspirational to see people transform their lives for the better. I always try to strive to live a healthy life, but I’m not perfect. I have no problem getting myself to the gym, but my diet and eating habits could probably use some changes. I just try to take it day-by-day and make myself make healthy choices, but it’s not as easy as it sounds.

Losing weight truly is a lifestyle change. You cannot go on a crash diet and then go back to your old eating habits, and not expect to put the weight back on. There also isn’t a fast and easy way to lose the weight, you just have to go back to basics – diet and exercise. This is what they teach on The Biggest Loser… or so I thought. I saw a commercial recently that was sponsored by Jillian Michaels for weight loss pills. Don’t the experts always tell us that weight loss pills are a scam, it just isn’t that easy. So, why is one the most famous fitness trainers in America putting her name behind this?

I can understand that she has some products that she lends her face to such as fitness video games, whey protein powder, books etc. These are all products that would help someone on their journey to weight loss the good ole’ fashion way, but weight loss pills? I’ve never heard them mention the pills on the program, so I am assuming that they do not want to promote the idea of using a pill to lose weight. Why would Jillian do that? Why? Why? Why? It just seems to go against everything that she preaches. Am I missing something?

I really had a lot of respect for her as a trainer. She works the contestants hard and she gets in their heads to find out why they got so big to begin with, which is also a big part of the process. She can get really tough, but her approach seems to work because her contestants always seem to win in the end. But now that I’ve heard that she lent her name to a weight loss pill, it makes me lose a little bit of respect for her. When I hear weight loss pill, I just automatically think – scam! So this takes away a little bit of her credibility.

What do you think, do you think she should lend her name to a product like this?

If you are sick, like we are in our house at the moment, you should stay home and rest to get well. But what if you are having complications and you need to see a doctor? Where do you go? In Montreal, they have designated 15 clinics as a go-to place for H1N1 patients. Here is the schedule for the week of Nov.9th to 13th:

CSSS de l’Ouest-de-l’Île
Clinique réseau Médistat
4965, rue St-Pierre
Pierrefonds
9h-21h
Clinique-réseau Statcare
175, chemin Stillview, bureau 104
Pointe-Claire
7h30-21h
Clinique-réseau Brunswick
143, avenue Frontenac
Pointe-Claire
8h-21h

CSSS d’Ahuntsic et Montréal-Nord
Clinique médicale Désy
5636, boulevard Henri-Bourassa Est
8h30-18h
Clinique médicale Ahuntsic
241, rue Fleury Ouest
Lundi-Mardi: 8h30-18h
Mercredi-Jeudi: 8h30-20h
CSSS Saint-Léonard et Saint-Michel
Clinique-réseau Saint-Michel
3355, rue Jarry Est
8h-20h
CSSS de la Pointe-de-L’île
CLSC de Pointe-aux-Trembles–Montréal-Est
13926, rue Notre-Dame Est
8h-20h
CSSS Lucille-Teasdale
CLSC Olivier-Guimond
5810, rue Sherbrooke Est
8h-20h
CSSS du Coeur-de-L’Île
CLSC de Villeray
1425, rue Jarry Est
8h-16h
CSSS de la Montagne
Clinique-réseau Westmount Square
1, Westmount Square
Centre médical Westmount Square
Niveau Mail Commercial
Suite C-230
Westmount
8h-20h

CSSS Jeanne-Mance
Clinique-réseau Médico Centre Mont-Royal
4689, rue Papineau
8h30-22h30
CSSS de Bordeaux-Cartierville-Saint-Laurent
Clinique-réseau Le Plein Ciel
475, boulevard De la Côte-Vertu
8h-20h
CSSS Cavendish
CLSC Notre-Dâme-de-Grâce–Montréal-Ouest
2525, boulevard Cavendish, bureau 110
12h-20h
The following clinics will be added on November 10th:
CSSS du Sud-Ouest-Verdun
CLSC de Ville-Émard–Côte-St-Paul
6161, rue Laurendeau
8h-20h
CSSS de Dorval-Lachine-Lasalle
CLSC Dorval-Lachine
1900, rue Notre-Dame,
Lachine
8h-20h

For more information regarding the H1N1 clinics you can visit www.pandemiequebec.gouv.qc.ca. Please take note that these clinics will not be offering vaccinations against H1N1, they are only there to serve patients that have been infected with H1N1.

As I had previously posted, I took Ava to get her H1N1 vaccination on Tuesday. I wasn’t sure what to expect because they had just began the program and  I didn’t know if it would be a long wait. What I didn’t expect was that they would turn away my two year old daughter. They have not started vaccinating children in my area as of Tuesday, so I went to another region that had already started to vaccinate kids within the ages of 6 months and 5 years. Well, turns out that they were rejecting anybody who came from another region, so they turned us away. I tried to plead with the girl to vaccinate just my girl, I could easily wait to get mine, but she wouldn’t agree. So, I went home disappointed and frustrated.

I understand that they need to supply the citizens of their area first, but when I got home and read a few articles about people that are being vaccinated in other parts of the country, I really started to get annoyed. It seems like there is a shortage of vaccine at the moment, which I can’t quite understand because Canada originally ordered enough vaccine to give everyone two doses and then they realized that everyone only needs one, so there should be a surplus, right? I mean, I’m not that bad in math! Anyway, I start searching the internet for news about the vaccine and I come across news that says that the Calgary Flames and their families have all received their H1N1 vaccinations. For those of you who do not know who they are, they are a national hockey team. I understand that Canada is hockey country and we are very proud of our teams, but this is pushing it. Not even all the healthcare workers and paramedics have been vaccinated yet and hockey teams are getting their shots????? To top it off, they didn’t even have to go to a public clinic like the rest of us, they got their own private clinic set up for them! Whoever made that decision and arranged for that to happen should be fired. Can you say….douchebag? It’s despicable! My toddler can’t get vaccinated, but some guy that makes a living skating around with a wooden stick can?????

Then I hear that prison inmates in Quebec have already received their vaccinations. WTF??????????? Some guy commits a crime, loses his rights, but we still care about vaccinating them. Who cares? Are you telling me that their life is more valuable than my daughter’s? Once again, is someone going to get fired for this? In my opinion, they should be purposefully giving some of these guys swine flu and letting them fend for themselves. If you murdered, assaulted, raped, molested, harmed anyone in any sort of way, then you go on the list to get swine flu, NOT to get protected against it! Geez, do I really have to tell these politicians how to do their job?

So here I wait to get my daughter vaccinated. I was in the grocery store today and I bumped into another mom that informed me that they have begun vaccinating kids in our area, so later today I will be running over there to pick up an appointment card. Hopefully, the appointment won’t be too far off. Wish me luck!

Well, the day has arrived, I am taking Ava to get her vaccination today. Vaccination clinics are opening next week on the island of Montreal, but I got word of one off island that is open this week, so I’m going! I don’t know if they will give me my vaccination, but I volunteer in a daycare once a week that takes care of kids between the ages of 6 weeks and 6 months, so hopefully they will agree to give it to me based on that information.

I have to admit, I’m pretty anxious about it. I absolutely hate needles, it’s one of my top phobias. When I got pregnant, I was more worried about the IV they were going to stick in my arm at the hospital than the actual labor and birth. That year turned out to be the “Festival of Needles” for me since I had a lot of complications after giving birth. I had one blood test done for coagulation in which they took 14 vials of blood from me. That’s right, you read correctly, 14 VIALS! They had to switch arms halfway through because the first one conked out, no more blood to give. I was in hospital for 10 days when Ava was 7 weeks old because I got pancreatitis, and they would come every morning to take a blood sample. Thank god for Emla!

Emla is a patch that you stick on your skin an hour before you get a needle, and it numbs your skin. You don’t feel the puncture to your skin at all. I would wake up every morning in that hospital and put that Emla patch on before those technicians would arrive. The woman would laugh every time, but hey, if it gives me peace of mind, laugh all you want lady, I don’t care!

I called my pharmacist this afternoon to see if I can use the Emla patch for the H1N1 vaccination, and she said I could although she wasn’t sure it would help with the pain since it is an intra-muscular injection. I don’t care, I’m putting it on me and my little one regardless. If it can help relieve even 10% of the pain and discomfort, then great!

I really am not looking forward to Ava getting this vaccination. I just hate seeing her in so much pain with that look in her eyes saying “Why did you bring me here????” What is even worse is that we will have to take her back a second time because she has never had a flu shot before, so she has to get it in two doses. Wonderful!

Well, I’ll let you all know how it went. Wish me luck, hopefully I won’t be standing in line for 5 hours…