Free Stuff Is Expensive

I was lying on a plastic-covered table at the free medical clinic the other day, stoically enduring an uncomfortable examination that would be too much information to elaborate on here, thinking about how useless money is as a measure of value.

In Canada, in theory, basic medical services are free. In practice, we pay for our health care indirectly via tax dollars, after the government has taken their cut to pay for the extra layer of paperwork required to administer the programs. For those of us whose tax dollars wouldn’t buy a Starbuck’s pumpkin latte, this still looks like a pretty good deal on the surface.

But let’s take a peek beneath the surface.

I don’t have a primary care physician, because there aren’t enough of them to go around where I live, so when I get sick, I can either go to the emergency room at the hospital, or make an appointment at the free medical clinic. In this case, my problem although painful, didn’t seem life-threatening, so I started calling the free medical clinic at 8:30AM on Friday morning. I got a busy signal on my first twenty tries, but I kept re-dialing every two minutes because the clinic only makes appointments for the current business day and the first hour of the next business day. On most days, all available appointment slots are filled by 9:30AM. I finally connected with the receptionist at 9:15AM, sat on hold for ten minutes and got the last appointment at 8:40AM the following Monday, by which time my symptoms had entirely disappeared.

I felt bad about this. Somewhere in this town, people who were even sicker that I was connected with the receptionist later than I did on Friday, and at the very moment I was being inconclusively examined on Monday morning, those who survived the weekend were once again playing the clinic re-dial lottery, some of them probably still in pain. A person with really bad luck might have played for days before getting an appointment.

After determining there was nothing obviously wrong with me, the doctor sent me downstairs to the lab for a generic CBC panel and another test I won’t offend your delicate sensibilities by naming. I have to call the clinic again next month to find out if my symptoms were the precursors of a life-threatening disease or just another flair up of my chronic hypochondria.

So how free is this system?

When I lived in the States, I paid exorbitant health insurance premiums. Like most hypochondriacs, I’m a pretty healthy person overall, so I was grossly overcharged when I did avail myself of medical services, some of which I had to pay for myself anyway. Specialists and diagnostic technicians tripped over each other in their scramble to ding my insurance company for every procedure that could be even remotely justified by my symptoms. I never endured the anxiety of being unable to obtain medical assistance when I was in pain, and test results came back in hours, or at most a couple of days.

I’m getting older. Things don’t work as well as they once did and given my hypochondria, unless I win a real lottery, I’ll be losing the clinic phone lottery more frequently. In retrospect, those exorbitant insurance premiums were an incredible bargain.  

This blog has received a critique. (That’s the politically correct term writers use when we really mean criticism.) Apparently, it doesn’t have enough pictures.
I’m a pretty thick-skinned person - you have to be in this business - and normally, I’d do what I always do on such occasions: shower the critiquer in profuse expressions of gratitude and wait until they are out of earshot before blowing a raspberry.  In this case, though, the accusation may have merit.

Now, I could explain about how writers are supposed to paint pictures with words and actual pictures are cheating. Or, I could subject you to a lengthy diatribe that boils down to: my blog, my rules.  However, I am in the middle of revisions, on a fairly tight deadline, and there are only so many letters my fingers can type in a day. So, instead, I’m going to publish a little photo journal of my journey to the library three mornings a week, which is the only thing I do that is even remotely photogenic.

First stop after leaving the house is my neighbors’ front walk, where Maggie must be allowed to sniff my knees, otherwise she howls at me, which I don’t mind, but some of my neighbors might.

Then, I take a dirt path through a scrubby little meadow

that becomes a scrubby little forest

to the footbridge where I cross the river.

and pick up the bicycle path

which  I follow to the park where the railway embankment path starts. Most of the railway embankment path looks the same so just imagine twenty minutes of walking along this:

At the end of the railway embankment, the path runs behind back yards, where some interesting graffiti can be seen.  There’s this intriguingly unfinished observation. (Nose twitch? World go round?)

  and this completely unintelligible message that would not look out of place in the Netherlands, where graffiti has been raised to a fine art. (If you can read it, please enlighten me.)

Forty minutes after Maggie sniffs my knees, I arrive at the library

where I rule my little internet kingdom

with an iron fist.

 Is that enough pictures for you? Okay then. Don’t let me hear this critique again

Righty and Lefty

I’m standing at the corner of Queen and Yonge Streets in Toronto, wondering what the hell happened to the subway station? I know there’s one here. Thirty years ago, I used it twice a day on my way to and from work, and while many things about this city have changed, I’m fairly confident the subway still exists, since the trip planner I printed from the Toronto Transit Commission website advises me to board the northbound train at Queen and Yonge.

At five PM on Thursday evening, the sidewalk is a heaving mass of homeward bound refugees from the office towers surrounding the intersection. I press my back against the building behind me and watch the faces flowing past. They are big-city faces, vaguely scowling and compensating for the jostling of the crowd by avoiding eye-contact. I am reluctant to ask for help.

Further along the street, the commuter river divides; half if it continues along the street, the other half seems to be walking into the glass wall of an unfamiliar building. In the hope they are heading for the subway, I put on my grumpy face (to avoid looking like the country hick I am now) and jump into the river, which carries me to the top of an escalator. Everyone else is getting on, so I do as well. The escalator decants us into the familiar grey and navy tiles of the Queen Street subway station.

Like riding a bicycle, subway commuting is an unforgettable skill. I don’t need to look at signs; my feet automatically shuffle toward the transfer machine. By the time I remember I don’t need a transfer, I’m already holding one and standing on the northbound platform. I step back, along with everyone else, when the familiar whoosh of hot air preceding the arrival of a train blows through the station. Onboard, I shuffle to the centre of the car and inhale the subway smell, a dusty blend of personal grooming products with underlying hints of garlic and sweat and urine. When we arrive at Bloor and Yonge, I navigate my way to the westbound platform on autopilot, feeling like a time traveler.

I’m sitting there on the train, basking in the sensation of being thirty years younger, when the woman seated across from me takes a book out of her purse and starts to read. Immediately, an argument between my shoulder imps erupts.

Righty: Look! She’s reading my book! I should go over and ask her if she’s enjoying it.

Lefty: Fool! Don’t do that! What if she hates it?

Righty: She’s over halfway through. She doesn’t hate it.

Lefty: Maybe she has nothing else to read.

Righty: I can just ask. I don’t have to tell her I’m the author.

Lefty: What if she’s seen my picture at the back? She might recognize me. How embarrassing would that be?

Righty: Okay. How about this? If she smiles while she’s reading, I’ll go over and ask.

Lefty: Fine. But if she frowns…

At which point the train pulls into a station and the woman, still reading, gets up and exits the car.

Righty: See? She likes it.

Lefty: Well, let’s hope they like it tonight.

Which is when I suddenly remember why I’m on the subway in the first place. I’m on my way to be the “conversation” at a Cocktails and Conversation event being hosted at the Kingsway LCBO. (For my international friends, LCBO stands for Liquor Control Board of Ontario. In Canada, alcohol is a controlled substance only available at government outlets.)

Lefty: Wish I hadn’t forgotten to bring the speech.

Righty: I’ll wing it – just answer questions.

Lefty: What if they don’t ask any questions?

Stumped by this one, Righty shuts up. Lefty snuggles in under my ear and chants “I’m doomed, I’m doomed…”  for the rest of the trip.

But Righty’s strategy proves sound. The twenty or so ladies who show up for conversation - well lubricated with pumpkin pie cocktails, two kinds of wine and an nicely hoppy beer - ask lots of questions, some of which I can actually answer. We yak away like old friends while I brush samosa crumbs off my sweater and try not to be too obvious about refilling my wine glass.

The next morning, I have some time to kill before catching the bus home. The restaurant where I have breakfast happens to be across the street from Maple Leaf Gardens, where I attended a Beatles concert when I was sixteen. Inspired by this and the previous day’s transit regression, I decide to take the Carlton street car out to High Park, where I shared a three room flat with five other Beatlemaniacs forty years ago.

Streetcars, it turns out, still smell like chlorine and gas fumes and sweat. I take a seat by the window, already halfway down memory lane. A woman sits across the aisle from me and starts looking for something in her purse. I catch a glimpse of a pink book. Without hesitation, I leap up and scramble off the streetcar.

Righty: I’ll bet that was my book.

Lefty: It was probably someone else’s book.

Me: Oh shut-up!