Day 10

Our experience with the Canadian healthcare system wasn’t at all what I was expecting. We awoke to find Alex’s face swollen again and the redness no better if not possible worse. I figured since it wasn’t getting worse we would press on. We crossed the border into Canada. The border crossing was uneventful, but they did confiscate our firewood. We headed for Calgary. As we were on the outskirts of Calgary, Amy felt that the redness seemed to be getting worse. At this point I figured we better let someone else have a look. It is difficult to be objective when it’s your own kid. We looked in our book and Calgary had a Children’s hospital called Alberta Children’s hospital.
We managed to find our way there and checked into the ER. It was very clean and modern. The people were nice and professional and we got back into a room in about 30-45 minutes. The resident came in and I told him the story. He seemed to think it was local inflammation from the mosquito. He called his attending in to have a look. He said if it was his daughter he would have done no different and he would just watch it for now. He said they see many severe reactions to the local mosquito and this did not look out of the ordinary. We were discharged to continue the antibiotics that I put her on. I felt better after having some objective eyes look at her. All in all the experience with the Canadian hospital was good. No different really than, a quality private children’s hospital in the states. This experience cost me about 500 bucks and I had to pay upfront. If I had been a Canada resident, it would have been free. Is this system worth significantly higher taxes? Would it work in the states with our irresponsible and entitled populace? I don’t know, just food for thought. My experience with Canadian healthcare wasn’t the boogeyman it gets made out to be down here. Of course this was just one visit to the ER. We left from there and continued on to Lake Louise in Banff national park. I found the park workers to be abrupt and kind of rude. Maybe that’s just them being Canadian. The Canadian Rockies are very majestic. We got the RV to the campsite and got to bed. We were a little exhausted after such a long day. I still need to get some Canadian money. It was nice to be able to get some yummy snacks in Canada. We got salt and vinegar chips and the coke is made with real sugar, not high fructose corn syrup. It’s delicious. Hopefully Alex will continue to improve. Tomorrow will be a long driving day.