Health System Failure

I'm stealing this heading from this mornings paper because I can't think up a better one. The gist of the story is medical mistakes kill up to 24,000 Canadians annually. The figures are even higher for the United States. That's a heck of a lot of people that die from the mistakes that are documented. What about the undocumented deaths of elderly people that are just simply put down as "old age". Some of those people might not have died with proper treatment or correct diagnosis but because of age, didn't get it. Many elderly die from hospital pneumonia and C-difficile. These are unnecessary deaths in my view.

Of course I didn't need to know that today since I'm booking gallbladder surgery. This surgery is going to happen before Christmas since it's pretty urgent and will be done before the Heart Ablation surgery. Because of the arrythmia I'm a little nervous but have been assured that they will be able to control my heart beat and will keep me in hospital one to two days as a precaution. I sure hope the surgeon is a good one and all will be well.