Spring is always a motivating time to accomplish everything that we’ve been putting off throughout the cold winter. All of those little tasks really start to add up, but once the hibernation period is over I find myself sorting out all of the things that I have been intending to do for months. One of the top items on my to-do list this year was to find a good general practitioner.
It had been far too long since I had last seen a doctor; the last one I saw was my paediatrician about 10 years ago. But with the increasing risk of various diseases and conditions, a concern for my health led me to dig out the phonebook and begin a mission to find a doctor. I had only two requirements: a) the doctor had to live inside Winnipeg (preferably around my neighbourhood, but I was willing to drive virtually anywhere inside the city to get an appointment), and b) I wanted a female doctor. I didn’t think that these conditions were too much to ask for. After all, Winnipeg is a good-sized city, and surely there would be at least one female doctor willing to take new patients.
Apparently, I was wrong. Phone call after phone call left me feeling more and more dejected as the receptionists informed me that the doctor was not taking any new patients at this time. In some instances I spent long periods of time on hold, only to have a very weary-sounding receptionist finally come to the phone and cut me off mid-sentence to briefly explain that they couldn’t take me in, followed by an abrupt click as they hung up the phone.
At last, one receptionist gave me the Family Doctor Connection hotline (786-7111, for anyone interested), and so I picked up the phone one last time and tried them. The nice woman on the other end of the line informed me that there are no female doctors in Winnipeg currently accepting new patients.
What?! How is that even possible? I resignedly asked for the names and numbers of all the physicians in Winnipeg that are currently accepting new patients. She gave me three.
Healthcare is currently in very high demand, which has the unfortunate consequence that not only is everyone working in the healthcare industry overworked, but many doctors are also unable to take more than one or two questions at a time during appointments. Because everything in the body is connected and one problem is often related to another problem, this means that only one issue at a time is addressed when you go to the doctor, which will not be beneficial to your body at all. A more complete, all-around examination of the body is necessary to understand exactly what is wrong, how it came to be so, and the best way to treat the ailment as well as prevent it from recurring.
What will this do to us, I wonder? Surely this is terrible news for our bodies. I’m a firm believer that we should treat our bodies as our temples; they should be attended to and waited on and cared for as top priority. But the sad truth is that they’re not. We don’t look after our bodies, and our healthcare system doesn’t do a whole lot in the way of helping us to look after our bodies, either. Slowly we slide into neglect. And then we’re surprised when later on down the road we have a whole host of problems/diseases/conditions that we were unaware of that are steadily doing more and more damage to our bodies as the years pass.
A corresponding problem with our overworked and inadequate healthcare system (the people themselves involved in the industry are quite capable; it is the system itself that is the issue) is that the focus in health today is generally more of treating conditions and diseases rather than working on preventing them. Whereas hundreds of years ago people would be dying from many diseases that are now commonplace, today they can be easily treated with medications. However, this does not factor in important changes to our diets and lifestyles, and so our bodies fall into disrepair. Rather than emphasizing the importance of a healthy diet and lifestyle, we instead fill up on supplements and medications prescribed by doctors who are too busy to really understand what is going on inside of our bodies.
Clearly, it is necessary for us now to rework the Canadian healthcare system and determine a better way to look after our bodies so that we can improve our overall health. It’s never too late to start doing our own research on preventative factors and altering our lifestyles to live in the healthiest way possible.
Sagan Morrow is a student attending her second year at the University of Winnipeg. She is studying English and Classics and her main interests lie in writing and travelling. She is currently writing a novel. Read other posts by Sagan Morrow.
