progress!

I've finally heard from the physio dept for Joan! We got a huge "welcome to the children's hospital" package, with a letter, maps, list of services, and all sorts of stuff. I almost cried when I saw it, I was so happy! It said we'll be getting a call in the next week or two to discuss Joan and what we're hoping to get out of therapy, and then they'll put together her team and make up a schedule for us. I hate that we've had to start all the way from scratch with everything. But it's nice to see some movement, at last! Hopefully, now that we've been accepted in, it won't take long for the appointments to actually start.

This hospital really does sound amazing. They even have a childcare space for siblings, where I can drop John while I take Joan to her appointments! That's one less thing to think about. It's a gigantic hospital - floors and floors, department after department. The physio clinic is connected to the neuroscience dept. It's amazing just looking at the map, to see everything they have stuffed in there. Hamilton had a children's hospital too, obviously, but it was a department here, a doctor there, all scattered around. This is one huge hospital, devoted to nothing but kids.

Unfortunately, we still don't have coverage for Alberta Health and Wellness, and they haven't even gotten to our application package yet, so I don't know if they're going to accept my citizenship documents. But they'll be getting to us soon - they open them chronologically, based on when they arrived, so they should be getting to ours within a week or so, and if there's no problems, it will be processed the same day, according to the guy on the phone. Not that I'm excited to start paying $88 a month in health premiums. But not everyone accepts the OHIP cards, so the sooner we get into Alberta's healthcare, the better off we'll be. Besides, the conservatives promised to phase out the premiums. In fact every party did. But now that they have a huge majority, they can do whatever the heck they want. The other day, they announced a "sweeping tranformation of healthcare", whatever that means. They gave no details. Doesn't sound too good to me. Mike thinks it might mean massive privatization. The worst case scenario he could think of is charging big user fees for visits, in lieu of the premium, but I'm not sure that's even legal.