How Canada does knee surgery.

My experience with knee surgery is limited to that of a co-worker. Knee surgery is that it is painful, necessary and should only be done one knee at a time.

That’s not the experience of pro wrestler Lance Storm, 38. He lives in Canada, where the health care is free and mothers pregnant with quadruplets are flown 325 miles to Montana because Calgary, population 1 million, cannot handle quads.

Lance Storm’s experience is:

1. It took him nearly 21 months from his initial consultation to get to the surgery — “I guess I can at least take comfort in the fact that at least I won’t be getting a large bill at the end of it all.”

2. He saw the surgeon at his office and then briefly for a minute or two before surgery.

3. After surgery, he received very little instruction.

4. His wife was given a wheelchair to escort him from the hospital and given no further instruction.

“I can only assume things went well, and if they had found anything unexpected during the procedure someone would have said something. My follow up appointment is Wednesday morning, so hopefully I will know more then and post an update on my website then, but for now I can only assume things went well.”

But hey, it is free.

You get what you pay for.

He blogged about it here.

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