Tommy’s vision

Keep people well, don't just patch them up

| Commenting on this story is closed.

‘Tis the season of goodwill and peace and social justice, and this is a story about how we’re doing with Tommy Douglas’s vision of health care, and about a man I know who went abruptly from decades of fit and healthy to very ill, and about his expensive climb back.

He passes out one day, falls, recovers, forgets it happened. It happens again, and then again, and then regularly enough that it gets his attention. ECGs and cholesterol measures and other tests show nothing; a specialist finally decides it is the control centre not doing its job of keeping his heart rhythm strong and regular, and, as he flatlines in the presence of the doctor one day while hooked up to a monitor, it is immediately decided the condition is severe enough to warrant a pacemaker.

He gets the pacemaker, and everyone who knows him is relieved to have the risk of cardiac arrest removed. But with the pacemaker comes a staph infection, which gets missed by his doctors long enough to nearly kill him. It’s finally diagnosed, he’s on big-gun antibiotics for a very long time, and then gets the old infected pacemaker removed and a new one put in. The antibiotics continue.

He’s declared well, and he’s thankful to be alive, but it’s obvious he’s not his former self. The stress of two surgeries, a very serious infection and long-term powerful antibiotic use have taken their toll. He’s extremely thin, has little energy, is clinically depressed, has a number of other complications from surgery and though thankful for modern medicine’s offerings of pacemakers, antibiotics and other miracle-working drugs he is clearly anything but well.

He is now, a number of years later, finally well, and happy not to have to worry about his heart taking unexpected vacations. But though he and his wife now sleep easy thanks to modern medicine, he also almost died thanks to modern medicine, and is now fully well thanks to his naturopathic doctor, who restored what the complications of surgery and the long-term antibiotic use had stolen.

He is also well thanks to a lifetime of staying fit, living simply, being frugal and having a bit of a savings account. Because to get well, to pull out of the post-op devastation, he had to pay out of his own pocket—a lot—and this, in a land of plenty and universal health care, is wrong.

Thousands of us climb back to health with naturopathic health care; thousands of us would rather manage our Achilles heel that way than take a vacation or own a home—and we’re the lucky ones. Many of us can’t afford our prescriptions, many more can only dream of access to naturopathic health care, and too many very sadly can’t even afford daily high quality nutrition.

We do need disease care, obviously, but if it were balanced with Tommy Douglas’s original vision of a system designed to keep people well rather than patch them up once they’re sick we’d need a lot less disease care. If that system included integrated holistic follow-up on the adverse effects of surgeries and medication, and if it included essential nutrition for the hungry or addicted, we’d have truly progressive health care.

I have a poet friend who cares a lot about those mostly going without, those who dream of a hot meal, of any kind of food, even bad food, those for whom vibrant health may always be out of reach. Last December, after buying someone who’d clearly spent the night outside a hot chocolate, he had this idea: “What say, one cold snowy December morning we beg or steal all the patio gas heaters, set them up on their poles all along the downtown streets and avenues, then call all the libidinous young men who always have sub-woofers in the trunks of their cars, give them only Taj Mahal CDs to play, and take a conga-line to work?” Count me in Steve. V

Well, Well, Well

Tommy’s vision

Keep people well, don't just patch them up

Most recent comments