My Health Ordeal of 2024

I hope it makes me a better Communist and anti-imperialist

Until about October of 2024 the state of my physical health made me feel lucky, and even a bit proud. I had never smoked cigarettes (or anything else). I had never consumed very much alcohol or neglected to exercise. But in October I suddenly noticed that when I jogged I had way less stamina than usual. It alarmed me enough to ask my family doctor about it in November. She sent me for a cardiac stress test, and (so she told me weeks after I had open heart surgery) expected it to turn up nothing. I am very grateful to her for being cautious.

Minutes after the stress test, a cardiologist told me that I probably had blocked arteries in my heart. He booked an angiogram to confirm. I hoped that the angiogram would refute that diagnosis. The cardiologist told me that was possible. No such luck. The angiogram showed that I had blockages. In fact, it showed the blockages to be so dangerous that I was rushed to London, Ontario (a two-hour drive away from my home town of Windsor) where on November 26 I had a triple by-pass.

The surgery went very smoothly. Back at home, I spent weeks closely following the instructions the experts in London had given me. I had resigned myself to a new phase of my life - and was feeling confident that I’d navigate it well. But a month after the surgery, on December 26, instead of celebrating my daughter's thirtieth birthday as my family had planned, I was back in a Windsor hospital recovering from a heart attack.

So that’s what a heart attack can feel like?

Shortly after taking my heart medications on Boxing Day morning, my back and arms suddenly started to ache. It was not a sharp, intense pain (I’d rate it only 4 or 5 out of 10) but it was relentless. It made me desperate for relief. I also felt a tremendous urge to poop. I made it to the bathroom and did my business but felt increasingly dizzy. I laid down on the bathroom floor to avoid injuring myself if I fainted. Lying on the cool bathroom floor alleviated the dizziness somewhat but not completely. From the floor, I was able to grab the bathroom door handle. I opened the door which enabled me to call out to my brother-in-law (who was in my living room watching TV) without raising my voice very much.

When he saw me on the floor he freaked out and hollered for my adult son to come upstairs to help him drag me out of the bathroom. My mother-in-law, who was in the kitchen with my wife, heard the commotion. My wife is deaf, so my mother-in-law alerted her to what was happening. I am sad to have scared my family that morning, but also very glad I was not alone in the house.

My son drove my wife and I to a hospital that is only two minutes away from our home. The emergency waiting room was packed but a doctor and two nurses started working on me immediately. A quick CT scan ruled out massive arterial blockage which they feared I might have. It took two doses of Fentanyl to alleviate the pain that had spread from my back and arms to my chest while I was in the hospital. A few hours later, shortly after I was set up with a room in the cardiac care unit, the pain in my back returned and I was given Morphine. Thankfully, blood thinners soon took the pain away permanently. No more heavy duty pain medicine was required after that day.

It took repeated blood tests over the next few days to confirm that I had indeed had a heart attack, but I was treated from the outset based on that assumption. An angiogram later confirmed that two of the three grafts from my triple bypass were blocked.

The unlucky ten percent

After bypass surgery, baby aspirin (which should never be given to children) is the only blood thinner given to patients. And in the majority of cases that works fine (and I understand it is the safest approach). The grafts stay open for years doing the job of bypassing blockages. But in about 10 percent of cases the grafts clog up very soon after surgery. Apparently, one reason they may fail is due to damage that is done to veins and arteries when they are cut out of the body to be made into grafts.

For the unlucky Ten Percent Club of which I am a member, baby aspirin is not enough. Additional antiplatelet drugs (and the installation of stents) are required. One blockage was fixed in Windsor with a stent on December 28. Another was fixed in London on January 3. That repair invoked breaking apart blockages with sonic waves, then installing stents.

So now I am finally back home and on the road to recovery. As you’d expect, I also have some observations about the state of Canada’s health care system based on my recent experience with it.

Not like the bad old days

I’ve been extremely impressed with the kindness and diligence of all the nurses (and there have been so many of them) who have attended to me since November. The doctors have been great too, but I’ve had much more direct interaction with nurses.

I spent many nights in the same hospital in Windsor where I was operated on for a double hernia when I was 3 years old (in 1969). I rarely think about it, and I know I can’t fully trust my 55 year old memories of that ordeal. But I remember enough to know that the amount of casual cruelty that was inflicted on children back then was disgusting. I’m relieved that all the nurses and doctors who I dealt with in 1969 must now be dead or retired for many years. Joni Mitchell said that the doctors and nurses who delivered her baby in Toronto in 1965 tortured her for having a baby out of wedlock. I have absolutely no problem believing her.

I see the “anti-woke” campaign led by rightwingers as an attempt to re-normalize all forms of cruelty that are no longer tolerated (or as easily tolerated).

Of course, cruelty against Canada’s First Nations is still tolerated, and it has shown up in our healthcare system. In 2014, Brian Sinclair, an indigenous man from Manitoba, died after a 36 hour wait in an emergency room because hospital staff assumed he was drunk. More recently, in 2020, Joyce Echaquan live streamed herself being taunted by healthcare workers in Quebec moments before she died. APTN has documented numerous cases like these.

Many things have shielded me over the past few months from the deficiencies in Canada’s health care system - something all white professional class people should bear in mind.

The Canada versus US Comparison

After being off work for months, spending about two weeks in hospital, taking hours-long ambulance rides, having a major surgery and multiple non-invasive tests and procedures, you’d never guess any of that happened to me by looking at my bank account. You’d never guess that I went from taking no prescription drugs in October to taking several a day since November.

The negligible impact on my income is thanks primarily to Canada’s universal health care system. Friends of mine who live in the US have confirmed to me they’d be out several thousands of dollars (at least) if what happened to me had happened to them. Another big thing that protected me is having a well-paying union job - something that is not easy to get in Canada, but not as difficult as in the US where union coverage is 3 times lower.

Why doesn’t the leading western imperial state, the US, offer its workers more generous concessions than Canada, its junior partner? My answer is that leading an Empire and making concessions to workers do not mix easily.

The Imperial Core versus Gaza Comparison

As Justin Podur has described, US allies like Canada have been so fanatically supportive of a Holocaust in Gaza in 2024 that the Israelis themselves must have been (pleasantly) shocked by it. It’s impossible to be in a hospital bed in Canada without thinking about the Israelis destroying all the hospitals in Gaza (and openly terrorizing doctors) with my government’s support.

Zionism is the twenty-first century’s version of Nazism. But my country’s top politicians compete to see who can be the most Zionist. We can hardly be surprised that Zionists in Canada, rather than being driven out of the medical establishment as would happen in a civilized country, have brazenly targeted doctors and medical students who’ve expressed anti-genocide views.

Zionism, and the Grand Racial Aristocracy it serves, are not compatible with human survival, much less a civilized health care system. My health problems in 2024 highlighted to me the qualities humans need to survive: compassion, intelligence, diligence. None of them are compatible with any form of systemic cruelty.

My wife and I leaving the hospital to finally go home - with a stuffed animal my daughter bought me for some reason..