From the editor
Hello Dear Readers,
Steph here, back to life after a 44 day stint at the hospital!
That was a long time to be out for the count. Words cannot express my gratitude to my family and friends who have taken care of my pets and home, and visited me at the hospital.
Jonny and Stacey really stepped up to the plate by getting this paper out while I was out of commission.
Thanks too to all the other contributors who gave us stories!
I had plenty of time to experience the New Brunswick Health System up close and personal.
My adventure began at Hotel Dieu in Perth-Andover in April, just before the surgery closed.
Due to complications, I ended up in the Upper River Valley Hospital for another 31 days.
The staff in Waterville was great, and many days there were student nurses on hand as part of their class curriculum learning the ropes and attempting to do whatever possible to aid their patients.
But there is also a continuous undercurrent of fear and paranoia at both hospitals as downsizing and cuts in our health care system continues. Most staff are nervous as they no longer have job security.
This creates an atmosphere of continuous competition as staff worries about their seniority and their futures.
Just from my hospital bed perspective, it doesn’t lead to a very nurturing and healing atmosphere if everyone is scared about the their future employment.
The current attitude towards our health care is that it has become all about money and centralization of services.
This has not increased efficiency at all and in fact has only reduced the level of health care New Brunswickers used to receive.
Plus, how can we possibly have a truly healing health care system when there is no job security?
We’ve all heard jokes about Hospital Food, but I personally didn’t give it much thought until I was faced with the hospital food experience myself! I had 44 straight days of hospital food and I want you to know it was not a pretty experience.
The food served at both Hotel Dieu and Waterville basically sucked. And it seems to be part of the ongoing campaign to destroy our rural prosperity. The crappy excuse for food I was served in both hospitals was made someplace else….Toronto perhaps? and shipped in to be re-heated and foisted upon unfortunate patients such as myself.
I am sorry I did not have a camera with me to record these strange meals so you could see them for themselves….and I was kind of between a rock and a hard place. I was supposed to be eating protein to help my body heal, but in my view reconstituted meat and micro-waved mystery stuff is not food.
And then I wondered, how could this this bland reheated food possibly be acceptable to other people? Many of the nursing staff I talked to didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with what was being served. This kind of broke my heart, as it was just another example of how our society has been conditioned to eat utter garbage.
But where I’m going with this little rant is that closing local hospital kitchens has destroyed yet more jobs and opportunities and the hospitals end up serving patients spectacularly awful reheated, artificial “food.”
To truly heal and get back on the path to health we need nourishing, fresh food made fresh by cooks who care about their job and product.
These cooks would use locally sourced produce and products. Local residents would have jobs, thus leading to the overall general satisfaction of life.
Jonny told me that 23 years ago he worked in the hospital in Moncton and the food was delicious…it was freshly prepared with locally sourced produce and meat.
The food was good , fresh & nutritious and people had satisfying, useful jobs and the patients were fed excellent meals.
Glad to be back!
Stephanie Kelley
