Medicine

I was noticing that the cost of medicine in Canada is 108 billion dollars. An absolutely enormous sum and one wonders what we used to spend all of our money on now before the Canada Health Act. I think it is money well spent but the costs of medicine are enormous - enormous to my daughter who is slowly sinking into debt with her medical training. Once she finishes medical school she will at least earn some money as a resident but still another 1.5 years for that.

I am proud of her to take on medicine. I walked away from all of that over 40 years ago. I just couldn't see myself taking care of people day in and day out - I wanted a more adventuresome medicine in far off Africa. The need for physicians though is here in Canada now where still 1/10th of all Canadians do not have a family doctor. Ours will soon retire I expect and we will have to start looking once again but we are fortunate in not using the system very often. Neither of us is on drugs at all and we are careful with our eating habits and life style. We walk a lot, bike a lot and lots of other exercise to keep fit. Will that keep us out of doctor's offices? Time will tell on that.

I am sorry that I had to leave work though because of my injured shoulder as I would have liked to have paid her tuition so that she wouldn't have had that debt on her shoulders. But she is young and one of these days she will be earning money as a physician which will help to pay those enormous debts that they all acquire by the end of their training. Then they work such a short time comparatively and a very busy time since they have to turn around and train the next generation of doctors.