Christina Spencer's blog

Rob Fraser RN coverage of the Canadian Medical Association Town Hall. Find great photos of Sholom Glouberman at the mic.

Find and follow him: @rdjfraser

"Go away!"

"One might think, that since I've been dealing with both pain and discomfort (two very different things) for a very long time that I would be good at managing it by now."

Canada’s health system is one of the best in the world, but its doctors, nurses, technicians and others cannot provide all of the answers. It is up to all of us, as individuals and patients, to take a more active role in our own health.

That means taking the steps now to increase our health in the future. And it also means making our voices heard in a system often dominated by the interests of those who work within it and governments, not patients.

Much of our health-care system is designed to deal with crises and immediate health needs. If you have a pressing, identifiable illness or injury, the system works well. If you are looking for information that will help you well into the future, that’s something else.

That is one of the theories behind the creation of a new organization, the Patients’ Association of Canada, which is designed to give a stronger collective voice to individuals and patients and help them to speak for themselves.

Visit SNAP Downtown Toronto to view a collection of photos from PAC's official launch party.

Check out a unique way a PAC member is helping spread the message about PAC.

Thank you Laura O'Grady for this great idea.

On March 1, Maclean’s is hosting “Health Care in Canada: Time to Rebuild Medicare,” a town hall discussion at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts in Toronto. The event, in conjunction with the Canadian Medical Association, will be broadcast by CPAC. The conversation on health care reform continues in the coming months in Maclean’s and at town halls in Edmonton, Vancouver and Ottawa.

He was a frail old man living in Vancouver. Call him Mr. B. One night he developed excruciating back pain, and his doctor was summoned. Mr. B was a lucky man in that his doctor was John Sloan, a general practitioner whose practice consisted of treating the frail elderly in their homes. Sloan’s diagnosis was a compression fracture of the vertebrae due to osteoporosis. He prescribed pain medication, and recommended keeping him at home. “It hurts like hell for six weeks,” Sloan said, “and then it gets better.”

A bad accident changes your life in a second. It happened to me a couple of weeks ago as I was striding briskly along the sidewalk on a cold winter day. I stumbled and landed hard on my hands. I realized with a sick feeling that I had broken both my wrists.

Toronto is full of good Samaritans. One of them helped me to my feet and took me to a coffee shop, where he phoned my husband and then an ambulance. The paramedics started the morphine drip right away.

If you must shatter your wrists, Toronto is a good place in which to do it. It has some of the finest hand surgeons in the world. They can bolt you back together with screws and pins and plates and bone grafts that will make you almost as good as new. Skillful therapists will teach you how to use your hands again, and you’ll never get a bill.

Thank you to everyone who helped make our February 15th Inaugural Conference a success! The generous donations of our sponsors allowed us to provide the conference free of charge. We're very grateful.