`Who cares?' We all should

Empathy and compassion cost nothing Lisa Machado

`Idon't even know what I am right now.” This, from a friend whose father was lying on a bed in the hallway of a Toronto emergency department, waiting for care for what was thought to be a kidney stone. I had called to see how things were going.

“When this is done,” he said through clenched teeth, after describing his 80-year-old dad, who also has lung cancer, mumbling on his phone, barely coherent because of the morphine given to manage his pain, “there are going to be so many holes exposed in our health system, and someone has to be accountable.”

His father had been in the hospital for seven hours — alone because, as with most emergency rooms during COVID-19, caregivers are not allowed. His jumbled requests for something to eat and drink were refused in case he was to have surgery. When an ER nurse woke his wife at 4 a.m. (4 a.m.!) to let her know he had been discharged and needed to be picked up, he hadn't had surgery, hadn't eaten, and he was still in a ton of pain.

Like a stuck record, the stories of the many ways health care is failing those who need it the most have been playing over and over every day since the pandemic began.

We saw it first in our long-term care homes, then, in delayed surgeries and again in cancelled procedures to treat cancer. It didn't take long to realize that there was an epic landslide underway, and patients were quickly being pulled under.

To be fair, this isn't breaking news. While it may have taken a deadly virus to make it impossible to ignore, we have known for years that LTC homes have been hurting the people who live there. Similarly, people living with illness have long been tangled in a system that, between difficulties accessing treatments, long wait-times and impossibly expensive drugs, makes managing disease both daunting, and at times, hopeless. It's a desperate situation made that much worse by a pandemic.

The question now becomes what do we do about it?

It seems unfair to blame those on the front lines. The ones who are most exhausted and anxious, risking their lives and those of their loved ones every day, caring for people in an environment filled with invisible threat. It feels wrong to point fingers at the ones who are buoying a system that's impossibly in pieces. What we are seeing now goes much deeper — it's somewhat the result of systemic policy and government shortcomings. I get that and yet, it's hard not to wonder if we are really doing the best that we can.

My brother was set to receive news last week about a recurrence of liver cancer. What we knew from accessing the online patient portal was that things didn't look good. He braced for the worst.

“Pretty sure I am going to need a second set of ears,” he said to me, when he mentioned he had asked his health-care team for a letter that would allow me to join him for the in-person appointment with his oncologist on compassionate grounds.

This is supposed to be a stop-gap measure to ensure patients in need of support get it during a time when hospitals are closed to caregivers. In my work with cancer patients, I have yet to see one person get such a letter since COVID began. Still, he tried.

When the desk nurse called him, her answer was a swift and firm, `No,' and when he mentioned that he expected bad news and really needed a family member to be with him, she said, exasperatedly, “Who cares?”

I laid awake that night wondering when everything will stop being so damn hard.

Sure, these are unprecedented times, and certainly, health care isn't the only thing buckling under the enormous effort of pandemic survival. From schools to businesses to parenting and relationships, weaknesses are being exposed all over the place with frightening consistency — just ask anyone who has finally walked away from their marriage and filed for a `pandemic divorce,' or that mom who loudly used the f-word while trying to help her kid figure out the chat function during my son's zoom class. We are all just about done.

But it doesn't mean we are tapped out of compassion, humanity and respect for life, does it? These are dark days, but certainly not so dark that we can't give those who need care, at the very least, our soft words and a gentle hand.

Because when you strip everything else away — policy issues, poor government planning, even the stress of a global pandemic — we are still humans who deserve to be valued. So maybe there isn't a bed available in the emergency room for an 80-year-old. And perhaps COVID protocols mean a young father is left to hear devastating health news alone. At the end of the day, compassion and empathy costs us nothing.

Surely COVID-19 can't take that away.