Saturday 9 October 2010

Who Do We Care About More?


Pets Or People

Now I've posed the question as a self-confessed animal lover. I admit it I adore dogs and can't imagine life without them. Me and my mum always seem prone to express more sadness or sympathy for situations of suffering that involve pets then when its people involved, I know that proberly makes us bad people but its who we are.

A recent event made me consider the contrast between how we treat pets in comparison to people. On Friday (my birthday) I was preparing for a family meal when I learnt that my Mum was trying to get my Dad to hospital. As you can imagine this was quite a shock. I quickly rushed home to find out what was going on. When I got there I found my Dad in agony and my mum on the phone trying to get an ambulance. We had a pretty good idea of what the pain was as my Dad had had the same problem before, its nothing life treating but even so he needed to go to the hospital. However it seems the emergency services did not agree with that, they refused to send an ambulance as the situation was not life threatening. Instead we where told to take him to a near-by medical clinic. So that's what we did, by this point an hour had passed but he had been in pain for 3 hours. We were greeted by a guy who answered the door without a word but instead a look, after a rash explanation he let us in and told us to sit down and wait for a while, even though there were no other patients and it was extremely painful for my Dad to sit. Several unhelpful members of staff and injections later we tried to ring for an ambulance again, once again one was not sent. Eventually my mum drove him to the A&E department herself he was scanned, poked and prodded yet again before been referred to another hospital, this time they actually sent him in an ambulance by this time it was 8 hour since we had phoned for the first ambulance, that's 8 hours of excruciating pain. It wasn't until this point that he was given food and painkillers. Every step of the way was an uphill struggle, littered with rude, unhelpful and uncaring people. I couldn't help but wonder what had happened to our medical system. When had it become so appalling? But its not just the staff that upset us but general people we came across too. At one point me and my mum had a quick dash to the local store to buy some painkillers on the doctors recommendation. When we got there there was a queue so my mum asked if she could cut in, explaining the situation, one women turned round and said "No, I want my lottery ticket." Safe to say she joined a long list of people me and my mum were prepared to put in the hospital just so my dad would have some company, if your catch my drift.

The whole experience was a disgrace. At one point my mum turned round to me and said " We'd have been better taking him to the vets." and I can't help but think that she was right. If a pets in pain we give them painkillers, if their hungry we feed them, and if their suffering we put them to sleep. We take such good care of them and cater for their every need, so why can't we extend that same kind of treatment to people.

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