Don’t wreck a system where minutes can be crucial
By Letter to the Editor on September 3, 2020.
When I was recently discharged from the Foothills Medical Centre Cardiac Intensive Care Unit, I promised the cardiology team that I would write you about the life-saving treatment I was lucky enough to receive.
On the early morning of March 24, a restless night of an aching left arm self-diagnosed as arthritis pain in this 76-year-old body along with feeling over nauseous now became a fear of COVID-19. The increasing pressure on my chest with crushing-like blows caused me to call my wife and give her the dreaded message to call 911. She quickly did and, upon the advice of the dispatcher, gave me an aspirin to chew.
The Lethbridge Fire Department EMS arrived within minutes. Initial COVID-19 protocol had to be altered as the paramedics quickly determined I was having a serious heart attack. With initial emergency treatment, they rushed me to the Chinook Regional Hospital Emergency as the prepared me for immediate transfer to the Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary. With life-saving treatment plans and the addition of an extra paramedic, the quick action of the Lethbridge Fire Department paramedics had me on my way to Calgary.
We arrived at the Foothills Cardiac Intensive Care Unit just in time as what I thought was a dizzy spell turned out to be several minutes of life-saving procedures and a quick transfer to the Angio Unit where a long metal stent was inserted within my heart as other arteries were identified as also needing priority treatment. Original plans for me to stay at the Foothills for 30 days prior to open-heart bypass surgery was revised due to the recent pandemic crisis, returning to Calgary Foothills Hospital on April 28 for double bypass surgery.
EMS dispatch in my city of Lethbridge gave me a chance at life as minutes determined the reality of life or death. I live on an odd street address that a far-away dispatch call centre might need time to locate and direct local emergency service. This concern includes possible service that someday a paramedic team in Calgary looks for their victim in Shawnessy when over 100 miles south a family in Shaughnessy waits for emergency 911 service who haven’t yet been called. Hopefully the delay doesn’t cost a life.
Please don’t let your bean counters destroy a proven life-saving system of emergency dispatch throughout our province.
Dale Leffingwell
Lethbridge
10-9
When seconds count, help is only minutes away.
Sadly if Kenney has his way this service won’t be available to many of our rural friends and families. Bashing doctors and blaming them for the high cost of health care in the province when it was former so-called conservative governments who created it in the first places proves how ignorant this guy is. If that isn’t bad enough he then tells us he is going to make the costs to taxpayers much higher with privatization. Where is the intelligence in that?
While he whines about the huge debt he is creating while he hands out taxpayer’s money to members of the Reform Party by creating these so-called Expert Panels, he slashes taxes for his rich friends and makes the situation even worse. It’s not surprising that he now has the second lowest approval rating in Canada for premiers, it is well deserved.
It does beggar belief to know that the Kenney UCP received a great deal of support from rural votes. As well, now, we received a notice in the mail from our municipal district laying out, in detail, what would happen to ‘linear property assessments’ by the Kenney UCP, to, as was said, to “increase the competitiveness of the oil and gas industry.” Decreased municipal services along, with possible impact on rural health services? What would it take for rural folks to change their votes? We, in anticipation, of how ‘things were going to be really bad’ with a Kenney UCP government, did not vote for them in the first place.
We certainly didn’t vote for him either, because former MLAs from the Lougheed era had taught me years ago that you can’t trust a Reformer and we knew what Kenney had helped Harper do to the country. A sister had spent about 20 years volunteering for Conservative MLAs and MPs at the federal level. She trusted Harper when he said he would tax the Income Trusts so she got involved with them. then he taxes them and she lost about $23,000.
Sadly Kenney has treated his rural supporters like morons and let’s hope they wake up and realize it. The ones in the cities certainly have we are hearing more and more stating they wished they hadn’t supported him
Ralph Klein was right he is a liar.
” Ralph Klein Accused Lobby Jason Kenney Led of Spreading Lies and Stealing from Seniors”
Let me try this out: we cannot afford to provide timely emergency medical services to Lethbridge residents because we have to provide billions in benefits to oil and gas interests who have not provided one extra job in Alberta. The bank account is empty, what can a govt do? They cannot do everything for everyone, so why not serve profitable foreign corporations first? How can you compare a few lives lost in Lethbridge and rural areas against the value of increased dividends to oil and gas investors?
Now we learn that our tailing ponds are leaking and the UCP government hasn’t been cooperating with the federal government to find a solution, what a surprise. These are the guys who told the world they didn’t care about global warming, while the world does care, or the pollution being created in the province, tried to destroy the Carbon Tax, that the oil executives wanted put in place, and took the pollution monitors off the off production. The backlash was huge with Encana pulling their head office out of Calgary, Norway taking their investments out of Alberta and telling the world not to invest in Alberta, while Joe Biden promises that if elected he won’t allow our dirty oil to travel across the U.S. to Texas.
If that wasn’t bad enough promised not to sell off any crown land but did just that and wants to sell off some province parks and close others down. It must make their supporters really proud of what they have elected. Too bad some of them aren’t man enough to admit they were wrong others certainly have. The fact is this guy has treated them like morons and they are letting him do it. .