Taking a Break

I need some time away from this.

I will be back in about a month, or month and a half. I have a few reasons for taking time off now.

First of all, I do not feel so much like researching and writing while I am undergoing medical interventions. I have had a bad week. I had to check into hospital for observation.

Hospital stays in Ontario these days are an ordeal. There is no way I could have endured more than three days. I am out now and the doctors will continue their tests on an outpatient basis.

The doctors are having a hard time figuring out what is wrong with me. They seem to now have the right treatment. I am feeling better. I am not out of breath if I cross the street. Yet I am tired and fuzzy headed.

However, there are some things going on with my corpus which can have long term consequences for me. It is not effecting my mind. I will be able to continue writing, which is important to me.

If I still have my marbles together, I can still do a blog. I just have to be able to sit up, see the screen, and tap the keys.

I also need time to put the finishing touches on my novel. Then, to figure out how to get it published in some form. Getting a book published will be a new adventure for me.

I could say more about the delights of being in hospital these days. Hospital food has a reputation for being awful but the swill served to me was mostly inedible. It was not just unimaginative and of poor quality ingredients, but totally ruined by incompetent cooks. They even managed to screw up boiled rice.

The hospital staff mentioned that there was a Tim Horton’s on the ground floor. There were also some pretty good restaurants in the immediate vicinity of the hospital. One of them recommended the Thai restaurant which I could see from my window.

These staff were notably tight lipped about the reason for the very bad food, and some other conditions in the wards. I got the impression things had recently turned worse for some reason.

When I got out, someone told me about a system which was supposed to exist in the hospitals, in which you order your food a day in advance. Nobody informed me of such a system while I was in the hospital. He was not clear as whether this system required me to pay for the food. That would be a typical conservative territory racket.

He was in hospital lately himself. However, I think he was in a different hospital. And he is a bit of a simpleton.

I will look into this topic if I get time. However, it is a pretty good racket. Make the food inedible, and make people pay for something a little better. Or, go downstairs to the food court and pay jacked up prices there. Most hospitals in Toronto have food courts. However, St. Mikes is an older building whose layout does not allow an expansive food court.

I talked to with the staff about walking out and buying some chow. Or, just going home and picking up some food and other supplies. Had I been there another day, I would likely have done that.

Other aspects to the hospital experience were unsatisfactory. Everything seems to be cheap jacked. Key elements are withdrawn to make things unworkable. This even extended to giving me a toothbrush but no tooth paste.

One of the gurney pilots philosophized that a hospital is a place where no one wants to be. Most of the staff do not want to be there either. They would like to strike for better conditions, but they are not allowed to.

So, that is what it is like in a hospital in a country where health care is free. It did not cost me one dollar to be starved, jabbed endlessly, and sleep deprived. People in The States, and I think many of my readers live there, have to pay out of their own pockets for this privilege.

The reality of the free Canadian system is that, while conservative provincial governments are required to provide it, they have always hated it. They are always looking for ways to privatize it by stealth.

This is why the solution for much of the problem with Canadian medicare is to federalize it. Yet the provinces also see the feds running anything social as intruding on their jurisdiction.

Canadian federal governments have usually been much more progressive than provincial governments. However, lately we have had a run of federal government which has been weak and unwilling to keep the provincial bullies and racketeers in line. This was the Trudeau government’s problem.

Or else, we have fake liberal governments who are really conservative in attitude. Partly, this was the problem with Chretien. Yet it is becoming clear that this will be a big problem with the Carney government.

So, it does not look good for the health system in Canada, and especially in Ontario, right now. This is concerning to me. I am coming to an age where it is clear I am going to need the health system more intently in future.

The response of groups like the Ontario Health Coalition (OHC) has been utterly inadequate. The Ford government thugs are brushing off all opposition. These groups really need to take it to a more intense level.

I could fill up a few blogs with the tactics and objectives of a serious opposition. But not here.

I am disappointed with the low readership of my most recent article. It seems the subscribed readers are mostly interested when I put out ‘storm and strife’ stuff. They do not want to read anything happy.
Sometimes my cheerier stuff gets traffic from outside the subscribe list, and even some shares. So, loosen up, people. While the world is collapsing, life goes on.

Actually, the world is not collapsing. It seems that way when you are stuck inside the Atlanticist bubble. Outside it, things are moving in a very good direction.

One thing I will start doing, going forward, is to encourage people to listen to media from the rest of the world. China Global TV is a good place to start.

At least in Canada, they have not totally locked down the internet. You can get views outside the establishment narrative or the ‘independent’ media.

You have to make a little effort. You have to develop some analytical thinking skills.

I will be back in a few weeks. I hope by that time I am feeling a lot better.