The real cost of cutting health care gets awfully personal

The theft of my identity began on a peaceful Sunday morning. I stumbled, busted an ankle in two places and ended up in Bridgepoint Health hospital for so long that I felt as if my name had changed to a number — specifically 727-Bed 4. Five months later I am finally back home but still trying to pick up the pieces. I emerge from the experience painfully aware of how lucky I am, terrified of the fine line that separates any one of us from getting lost in the system, unable to get on with our lives because budget cuts erode the support services we need.

Up close and personal, cost-cutting tears at the very essence of what health care is supposed to be. It starves communities of vital home-care resources, traps people unnecessarily in institutions, and shamefully milks the dedica- tion of the nurses, therapists and support staff who struggle to make things work. It also turned me into a bed-blocker. As someone who uses a wheelchair and lives independently, I thought I already knew the vagaries of this system along with the complications that having both multiple sclerosis and osteoporosis would bring to healing my fracture.

I understood that being bedridden would mean I would lose the use of muscles I had fought so hard to maintain.

I understood I would have to learn to walk all over again.

I understood I would have to take a trip back to infancy — namely, toilettraining, “pull-ups,” the whole bit.

I understood I would be as proud of becoming continent as any toddler. (Trust me, timing is everything whether you’re 5 or 65: Too soon and you’ve expended an enormous amount of precious energy for nothing, too late doesn’t even bear thinking about.)

I understood how quickly institutionalization can take hold, how easy it is to lose contact with the world outside, to forget where you were going with your life. I understood the priceless gift of friends who visited, who took me out to lunch, brought me coffee and made me laugh, particularly when I spilled stuff, which I did frequently.

I understood that my occupational therapist was moving heaven and earth to give me my life back, as she does tirelessly for everyone on the east wing of Bridgepoint’s seventh floor. I understood that my social worker was spending hours advocating on my behalf, that my community case worker was pulling for me.

What I didn’t understand was that the system could defeat all of that effort because I had been in hospital so long I had effectively been erased from the books at the agency that provides the help I need to shower and dress in the morning.

I wanted to return to my life as a freelance journalist and a student in the disability studies program at Ryerson University, where some my classes began at 8 a.m.

But suddenly I was told I could no longer get the community support services I had been receiving for years, long before I broke my ankle and disappeared into an institution.

The upshot? I became a bed-blocker. While I was physically cleared to return home, my stay at Bridgepoint was extended until the community services issue could be resolved. The delay was only a week — nothing, you might say, in the general scheme of things. And yet . . .

While I was still at Bridgepoint, was someone waiting for a rehab bed forced to stay in an acute care bed at another hospital? Was someone stuck in the corridor of that hospital’s emergency department waiting to be admitted to that acute care bed? I don’t know. I just know that more community resources are vital. Communities are where we find our identities, where we contribute what we can to society. Strong communities build strong nations. Time to give them the health-care resources they need. Helen Henderson is a freelance writer and disability studies student at Ryerson University. helenhenderson@sympatico.ca