A big thank you to Janet Walker, a former nurse and adjunct professor, for sitting down with SecondStreet.org to discuss her research into what Canadian patients experience while they wait for health care.

Janet had some incredible anecdotes to sure – the hardest part was condensing her interview into a short clip.

Here’s a shocking story that Janet shared with us that isn’t in the clip above:

“…I can tell you the story of a man from Alberta. He was a veteran and he was waiting for his hip surgery and he was on narcotics to manage the pain while he was waiting and he finally got the call.

Down to Edmonton he flew and in preparation for the surgery they do workups. They do kidney tests and blood tests and you know liver tests to make sure everything is good before surgery.

And his liver function tests was a little bit unsatisfactory. That’s because of all the narcotics he’s been taking. So the health group there, the health team said to him ‘look we don’t want to operate on you because of your liver function tests. So we want you to go home, we want you to get off of the drugs and come back to us in a year.’”

Just imagine waiting for a year for surgery. Then, when it’s finally your turn, the government tells you the pain medication they’ve had you on have damaged your system to the point that you’ll have to go off of them and wait another year for surgery.

Unreal.

Colin Craig is the President of SecondStreet.org