I celebrated Family Day with some who couldn’t.
Early Monday afternoon, I drove to an appointment about 200 kilometres from home. Partway down the highway and into the early afternoon of Ontario’s first Feb. 18 holiday, I was diverted to my elderly mother’s Toronto apartment. She had suffered a recent fall, was experiencing a lot of pain and her 84-year-old body wasn’t responding to over-the-counter treatment.
An ambulance arrived about 3:30 p.m. and I met my first Family Day non-celebrants, three EMS paramedics.
“On a scale of one-to-10, Mrs. Barris,” the paramedic asked my mother, “how much pain is there?”
The second and third paras seemed to stand back. They watched the youngest member of their team ask questions of my mother, my sister and me. Then they questioned his queries, evaluations and diagnoses. I soon realized the youngest para was a trainee. He was undergoing a test from his more experienced colleagues. It turned out, this was a tense ambulance ride for all of us.
At St. Michael’s Hospital in downtown Toronto, we watched as the emergency room began to hum, as clerks processed my mother’s health card, filed her diagnostic papers and triaged her condition. During a quiet moment, I approached the young para trainee about his assessment of my mother’s situation – a dislocated shoulder, some internal bleeding and, it turned out, a worsening of her chronic kidney failure.
“You know, she’s really hard of hearing,” I said to the young paramedic. “Maybe next time, instead of shouting across the room, you might get down closer to her ear and ask her questions the way a doctor with bedside manner skills would.”
He smiled and nodded.
“Just what you needed,” I added, “another critic on a provincial holiday everybody gets except you.”
Inside the ER, other Family Day non-celebrants worked just as feverishly – nurses, orderlies, residents, GPs, specialists and other paramedics. Everyone seemed focused and into the cut and thrust of the ER. Nobody was idle or under-assigned. Only when one ER staffer called out “Coffee run” at about 9 p.m. did I see anybody ease up. This was no holiday for the regular staff of St. Mike’s; it seemed a typical day full of saving and enriching the lives of those in medical need. Come to think of it, I don’t imagine it was much of a Family Day for the folks at the nearby coffee shop either. Just another long order for a group of thirsty customers.
About that time, another paramedic team arrived in the ER ward. On board their gurney lay a man swaddled, strapped and hooked to an intravenous bag. He and the diagnostic team quickly disappeared into an enclosed triage area. I learned later that this was the man, next day reports said, had been beaten badly in a Toronto beaches area park Monday night.
That’s when another group of Family Day non-celebrants – the attending police officers – arrived. They appeared to have found someone close to the victim, someone who could vouch for the injured man and give the go-ahead for medical assistance. I eavesdropped on the ER doctor speaking to the friend of the victim; he had suffered a fractured skull in the incident and would need some pretty dicey neuro-surgery to be saved.
But I was interested in the police officers. They had obviously gone to some lengths to find the victim’s friend.
“Heck of a way to spend Family Day,” I commented to the officers.
As it turned out, that was a sore spot. They weren’t too happy about what they described as being excluded from the province-wide holiday. In fact, they had plenty of criticism for both the provincial and municipal governments and their leaders for not allowing them to enjoy the same holiday most Ontarians were enjoying on Monday.
“I would imagine the injured man in the operating room right now, is awfully glad you two didn’t have a holiday today,” I said.
That seemed to appease them a bit. Although it occurred to me that holidays must disappear into the calendar for the folks I met last Monday. For them holidays are rarely celebrated. For them, if they’re assigned to work on such days, New Year’s, Canada Day or Labour Day are no different from any other day of the year. What might make them memorable, however, is that a lost person was found, a murderous fire was put out or a life in peril was saved.
Celebrating another statutory holiday, such as Family Day, I think pales in comparison to the actions of the people who make a living making a difference.
