“He knew the patient so well it didn’t make sense to waste time on paperwork”.

Oops 🙂

Seriously though, this is one thing I’ve really gotten the impression about Canada–

Doctors have **a lot** more latitude here. That’s good, if you’re a good doctor. No headaches to get approvals, etc. No breathing down your neck, questioning your moves–

But if someone is a ‘bad’ doctor, it’s going to take even longer to be stopped.

Overall, the medical culture is much more conservative, with ‘the doctor’ as ‘the doctor’, which overall is much better for someone like me. I need my doctors to feel empowered, to work with me, to trust their instincts.

One of my big problems in the U.S., many doctors don’t want to help me, because they know my case is going to be a big headache–with insurance approvals–and they’re more scared, because they feel more people are watching and the U.S. culture is much more lawsuit prone than here in Canada. It makes a medical case like mine too scary.

Where in Canada, doctors are more autonomous–a lot is left in their hands, in their control. They know they can make decisions with me. They don’t have to worry about justifying it to others as much.

(Making doctors lives better is the medical climate in general–Canada has much more of disdain for lawsuits, which I definitely inherited too–it’s like it’s an old British mentality, that we need to work our problems out in private. A lawsuit, by it’s very nature, is airing your dirty laundry in public–and who of any good breeding wants to do something like that?)

I still have a long way to go before I feel totally medically safe in Canada, due to the complicated nature of my case. I’m not so worried about the doctor not having the tools, I’m more concerned about them not understanding the urgency to do something–to actually use those tools.

I just look so healthy all of time, it can be a major distractor when I need something done.

Like my stomach swelling problems…it definitely responses to antibiotics, and the one doctor I tried to discuss this problem–causally, just testing the waters–he could just not possibly believe I could have peritonitis the way I looked.

He wasn’t with me when I had bacteremia and looked healthy, or when I had an inch wooden splinter in my toe and only felt moderate pain. Or the countless imaging studies then an infected gallbladder. He wasn’t with me.

I’m just a see it to believe it case, and no one around here has seen it so they’re very slow to understand, let alone believe it.

It’s just going to take some time. I just have to hope the Ig therapy holds up enough so I get through it.

If I was a doctor? I’d pack my bags immediately and come practice medicine in Canada. It’s everything a doctor would dream about how they should practice medicine. They can order their patients state of the art tests and drugs, and they know all of their patients are going to get what they need because it’s covered. The lifestyle is much better (no middle of the night calls), and the anxieties that exist so prevalently in the U.S. are much more minute here.

But for me–the complicated medical case with already a lifetime of records to read and comprehend?

I’m still a lot safer in the U.S., with the doctors who know me and trust me. The doctors who know me understand the gravity of my medical conditions…my deceptively candy coated presentation…

And I’m worried I just might die here before Canadian doctors figure it out.

“Oops, she was as sick as she said after all.”