When the two young women from the CCAC (Community Care Access Centre) appeared at my bedside the morning I was being discharged from the hospital I could tell they really wanted to help. The senior of the two was reading my chart as she introduced me to the woman she was training. They both smiled implausibly brightly.
"Sooo..." she said, as she squinted at the nursing notes. "You had an ileostomy before, so you're OK to manage that? But you need wound care?"
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On Friday I wrote about my personal and political experiences as a patient activist and my take on the new patient ombudsman position to which Christine Elliot has been appointed. I have a lot more to say about many aspects of this appointment and its implications.
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There are many tangled threads and competing demands in the life of a patient activist. Within your body, your ethics, your politics. It's a murky cauldron at the best of times.
![Photo: [AndreasS]/flickr](http://rabble-6.rabble.ca/sites/rabble/files/imagecache/small-75-square/node-images/home_bed.jpg "Photo: [AndreasS]/flickr")
Most of us shudder at the idea of being hospitalized or living in a long-term care facility. As people age, it is understandable that their most common goal is to be at home as long as possible. And as people experience health care in inadequately funded hospitals across the country, the prospect of facing deteriorating health in a public institution becomes even more unnerving. It is in this context that the Ontario government released their new plan for home care on May 13, "Patients First: A Roadmap to Strengthen Home and Community Care."
Stephen Harper's policies on drugs are embarrassingly backwards. In Canada right now, millions of people are paying out of pocket for medically necessary prescriptions and supplies, or, becoming ill when they can no longer afford to. At the same time, proven life-saving initiatives like Insite, Vancouver's safe-injection site for drug users, are being threatened by new legislation. Canadian communities need a national pharmacare program but instead, on March 23 the Harper government passed the second reading of Bill C-2, the "Respect for Communities Act," to throw up roadblocks in the creation of safe-injection sites.
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March 8 is International Women's Day (IWD). In 1917, women marched for bread and roses. In 2015, in solidarity with the World March of Women, we march to reclaim our bodies, our territories and our communities.
One in seven private health-care clinics in Ontario have failed provincial safety inspections. Since 2011, Hepatitis C outbreaks at three colonoscopy clinics have caused at least 11 patients to become critically ill.
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