Glenn Kelly will be one of the first to tell you the health care system may not be broken but is definitely on life support.
But he will also be at the head of the line to tell you of the quality of care provided and of the professionalism exhibited by those who work within it.
It's not just because Kelly, the deputy chief of the Topley Volunteer Fire Department, works within that system in responding to medical calls and motor vehicle accidents in addition to fires. It's because the people within that system saved his life.
His story began noon on Oct. 9 when in slurred speech he tried to tell his wife, Darlene, there was something wrong.
"You're having a stroke," Darlene told him as she was dialing 9-1-1.
"And that's exactly what the 9-1-1 operator said immediately," Kelly recalls.
Within short order five members of the Topley fire department arrived. Also trained as first responders, Kelly found himself on the receiving end of their experience.
"Each knew exactly what they had to do," Kelly said.
Soon after an ambulance from Houston arrived and Kelly, placed carefully in the back, was headed to the Bulkely Valley District Hospital at code three, meaning lights and sirens.
By a little after 1:30 p.m. he was in the hospital's ER. Fifteen minutes after that he had a CT and within 20 minutes, a doctor was ready with the results.
The good news was that the CT did not show any damage to Kelly's blood vessels in his brain from the stroke and that while there was damage, it was because he has diabetes.
But what Kelly describes as several "ah ha" moments came when he was told he had an 80 per cent blockage in one carotid artery and a 60 per cent blockage in the other.
"And I've ordered an air ambulance," Kelly repeated of the doctor's next words.
From the Smithers hospital it was another ambulance ride to the Smithers airport, a medevac flight to Vancouver followed by another ambulance transfer to Vancouver General Hospital.
Each step of the journey Kelly said he was treated with care, compassion and a matter-of-fact professionalism.
"It was hot on the plane and, you know, those paramedics are wearing flight suits and they must hot. So I asked them. And one said 'It's not about us. It's about you,'" Kelly said.
There was even a reminder of Topley during the ride to Vancouver General when one of the paramedics told him she went to school in the small elementary school there.
Once at VGH, Kelly said he was efficiently processed and placed on a ward.
"If someone said they were going to take your blood, five minutes there was someone to do that. When I was taken up to a ward, the nurse was waiting," he said.
Kelly spent two weeks in Vancouver. His surgery to take a portion of a vein from a leg and use it for new arteries was cancelled several times, not because of any problems but because others were in more need.
"I am more blood flowing to my brain now, so that makes me smarter," he quipped.
Now back home in Topley and with several months of recuperating ahead, Kelly reflects on the events which began on Oct. 9.
"We have a system. It may not be a great system but it is a system with a lot of great people in it," Kelly said.
"In my experience, from the volunteers in Topley to the paramedics right to the vascular surgeon, these were all great people, absolutely incredible. For me it's really a story about the people in the system."
