Ah, the Alberta health care system... such a barrel of laughs.
When I was in Grade 11, I broke the little finger on my left hand at football practice. It wasn't too serious an injury, so I finished practice (untaped, by the way... our wonderful trainer had decided that she wasn't needed that day) before heading off to the doctor. I ended up with a cast on my hand, and I figured that'd be the end of it until it healed; in the meantime, the doctor that I saw told me that football was still a go, as long as I wrapped my hand in foam each day.
Several weeks later, the cast was falling apart, and it became obvious that my finger wasn't healing well. I went to see another doctor, and he recommended that I have it operated on, as the fracture was of a different sort than the original doctor had thought. Unfortunately, that course of action would bring my season to an end, but the guy seemed adamant in his opinion that the finger wouldn't heal without it, so I went ahead and had the operation, and I figured that'd be the end of it until it healed.
Fast-forward to about four days after the surgery, and I'm still in considerable pain; I was starting to worry, but I figured that this was standard, being that I'd never had surgery before. I was sitting on the couch and watching "Saved By The Bell" reruns when I noticed this smell coming from somewhere in the room. Being that my brothers are somewhat piggish, and that we had a mouse problem in the house at the time, I figured that something had died in the room, and I proceeded to tear that basement apart trying to find it. After about an hour and a half of looking, it occurred to me that the smell was just as strong no matter where I went; I took a whiff of my hand, and nearly threw up. We went to the clinic right away, and the doctor there pried the gauze off my hand to reveal a veritable puddle of white that had spewed from my finger. Apparently, the surgeon who'd worked on me had not only forgotten to mention that I was supposed to change the cover and soak the wound in a hydrogen peroxide-based solution daily, but had also neglected to prescribe antibiotics. Of course, further testing showed that the infection had entered the bone; the end result of this was that I ended up on intravenous meds for six weeks, and you can imagine what that'd do for an 11th-grader's social life. The needle came out for good eventually, and I thought that... well, you know.
About a year after this, I began to notice that the finger in question was starting to swell up grotesquely, and so it was back to the hospital to get it checked out. They found that the surgeon had left a stitch in there, and half an hour of bleeding it seemed to relieve the swelling. The surgeon who'd operated on me happened to be there at the time, and he pretty much ignored my existence the whole time I was there, including several instances where he'd walk past where I was sitting and immediately become engrossed in the picture hanging on the wall opposite me. This was the last time I'd go to a clinic on account of that finger, which is fine now... if you call a grotesquely deformed and unbendable finger "fine."
This wasn't the only medically-caused disaster I had to deal with in that time. Perhaps I will someday post the fabled "Great Asthma Adventure of '04."
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