I am newly part of the family of doctor orphans and, you will think me lucky, I also seem to subscribe to the select club of cardiac patients without a cardiologist.
Some 2.3 million Quebecers without a family doctor? I didn’t know there were so many of us: I feel less alone!
Countless people around me told me about their anxieties of waiting for months or years. Accustomed to my doctor and my cardiologist, I no longer knew what it was to be without a doctor.
Then it happened to me.
- Listen to the meeting between Gilles Proulx and Richard Martineau via QUB :
Farewell, doctor!
My general practitioner lost patience because patients filed complaints against him, he told me. He recommended they get back to a healthy weight. (With me too, on this point, he was always strict. “Gilles, you are five pounds overweight!”)
He also told me that the College of Physicians of Quebec scolded him for his calligraphy (which pharmacists never had trouble reading on my prescriptions). Disgusted, here he is retired… and here I am on the waiting list!
Cardiologist wanted
Don’t worry about my heart. I only had a quintuple coronary bypass almost twenty years ago, so my case is not very serious…
- Listen to the meeting between Gilles Proulx and Richard Martineau via QUB :
Here I am without news from my cardiologist since March 8. His clinic closed without warning, I hit the window while showing up for a follow-up appointment. I call and… no service at the number you called.
At the Verdun hospital to which he is attached, two jaded attendants with blank looks and slow gestures, in order to get rid of me, gave me the number of a CLSC where he does not work…
If this continues, I’m going to call privately… either for a doctor, or for a detective who can find my cardiologist!