Thursday, March 24, 2011

The Drugs at Main & Hastings didn't get him but the Bugs in a British Hospital Did

At the Tuesday night cabaret at Carnegie, a woman told me that former Downtown Eastsider Ken Stook, who some people knew as "Kane", had died. She said he had died over five years ago. I hadn't known. He put me up once ; he helped me out until I found an apartment and I helped him out with his rent.

Ken lived his last few years in Vancouver in the Ford building at Main & Hastings. He didn't get into drugs like some low income people who end up on the Downtown Eastside. I recall one of his friends in the Ford building trying crack because he wanted "to see what all the fuss was about". But Ken was frugal with the little money he had, and he didn't seem to be too tempted by drugs.

He used to volunteer at the now defunct La Quena cafe on Commercial Drive. I think he got meals or something in exchange.

A few years ago one of Ken's friends at the Ford building told me that he had returned to England to train to be a psychiatric nurse. When I ran into that friend again, he told me that Ken had since gotten ejected from the psych nurse program. He had been working with troubled kids and one of them had hit him. Ken hit him back.

Ken was born in Wales and as a young man was in the British army. While on duty, he had seen some people acting suspiciously around a car -- if I remember correctly, he thought they were IRA -- and he handcuffed them to the car while he was arranging for help to arrive. The car blew up. Time to move to Canada.

Ken would have been in roughly his early forties when he required a stay in a hospital in England. The woman I talked to didn't know the reason for his stay, just that it wasn't what killed him. What killed him was a bug he picked up in the hospital. Hospitals in England are notoriously unsanitary. CBC radio had a show early this year on that topic and discussed the high death rate. They interviewed a Canadian man whose mother had been in England, required a hospital stay, and had come out in a body bag as a result of picking up a super bug. Bugs are a problem in all hospitals -- Surrey, B.C. had a reputation for this too -- but the problem is particularly bad in England.

I don't know the reasons management has allowed British hospitals to become dirty death traps. But I do read news stories about staff in British hospitals being stretched attempting to accommodate the huge, intolerant, Muslim population. Muslim men don't want their women seen by a male doctor. Muslims demand that nurses turn the beds toward Mecca. Time to divert less resources toward accommodating and more toward disinfecting.

Ken got infected. Then he apparently got re-infected. Goodbye Ken.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't worry, superbugs will outlast even muslims.

Anonymous said...

They can build a muslim hospital back home then and go home.

this shit makes me so mad.

...and the news about Ken, poor guy.

vancouver mark said...

Maybe if the English didn't spend all that tax money on bombers to slaughter so many Muslim women and children in so many Muslim countries they'd have some funds to clean their dirty hospitals.

In the meantime, maybe the Royals could wash the wards, help out with a little community service in exchange for all that sinful opulence their taxpayers keep providing.

Anonymous said...

Sinful??????????
oh geez.

vancouver mark said...

OK, I'll edit out "sinful" and say "far more decadently indulgent than 99.999% of the populace will ever experience" instead, if it works better for you.
Happy if you have no issues with the rest of my comment!

Remember: every Cruise missile equals five entry-level full-time hospital janitorial positions at four years per, give or take.

Anonymous said...

Well Canada has enough $$ to spend on both, it's not up to me if they DO or not. Sorry.

vancouver mark said...

Which relates to you somehow blaming Britain's health care crisis on Muslims how, exactly??


(But great to hear that Canada has so much money, guess we'll lower taxes and restore some services??)

reliable sources said...

vancouver mark,

In the blog post, I wasn't blaming Muslims solely for the unsanitary conditions in British hospitals.
It's just that the demands Muslims make in British hospitals have been in the news lately. And I like to do my part to raise awareness about the unhealthy practice of allowing Western tolerance to be abused for the purpose of imposing Intolerant Islam on us.

vancouver mark said...

Of course Muslims are being portrayed negatively in the news. This has been going on for a very long time, and will doubtlessly only escalate as the western forces continue expanding their war for domination of the entire Muslim world (or at least all the parts that have oil, or control access to it).
Don't be too quick to believe all the hype.