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Last week, I had the unfortunate opportunity to experience our bewildering health-care system up close. While cycling along the Lachine Canal, I crashed my bike. Aside from some major bruising, what I was most concerned about was my throbbing wrist. With a 75-kilometre charity bike ride planned in New York City that weekend, I needed an X-ray to determine whether it was a sprain or a more serious hairline fracture.

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While Premier François Legault touts his government’s health-care record on YouTube, most Quebecers are painfully aware of how difficult it can be to access medical care. Still, I thought getting an X-ray would be easy enough. After all, there are plenty of radiology clinics in the city. I assumed I could just walk into one and wait my turn.

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I assumed wrong.

The first clinic I called to ask whether I needed an appointment told me I didn’t. Since it was a gorgeous spring morning I figured I would walk. Once there, the front desk confirmed no appointments were required. They did, however, require a doctor’s referral. I politely told them they could have led with that on the phone and saved me the promenade.

“We can’t do anything without a referral,” they said. “You need to get your GP to write one for you.”

“But I don’t have a GP,” I stammered. “I lost him two months ago when he retired. I’m on a wait-list for a new one. What am I supposed to do now?”

“Go to a walk-in clinic,” they suggested.

I dutifully complied. But I should have known it was not going to be that easy.

The first two walk-in clinics told me I needed an appointment to see a doctor. For the record, that’s literally the opposite of a walk-in clinic, which is by definition a medical facility that accepts patients on a walk-in basis. The third clinic’s front desk sheepishly told me they didn’t even have a doctor on staff that day, which was less than reassuring.

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Being that my injury wasn’t life-threatening, I was trying everything I could to avoid going to the ER where I knew wait times would challenge my will to live. I tried calling 811, the GAP service the government urges those without a doctor to use. A very friendly nurse took down my information and told me someone would call me back.

In frustration I posted online, detailing my experience. Within minutes, hundreds of Facebook friends were sharing their own depressing stories about trying to access health care or offering tips on how to speed up the process, listing ERs with shorter waits. People are actively devising ways to circumvent an often confusing, cumbersome and inaccessible system. I shudder to think what it must be like to navigate our stretched-to-the-max resources if you don’t speak French or English, are a frail senior, or someone seriously ill with no support system.

Many suggested I go to a private clinic. Like most Quebecers, I’ve resorted to using private facilities in the past, but last week, having just filed my taxes — which help pay for the public health care I couldn’t access — I stubbornly refused.

Eventually, thanks to a friend, I was able to secure a doctor’s referral and that coveted X-ray. As the physician checked my wrist, I asked if she thought Santé Québec’s just-named “Top Gun”, Geneviève Biron, would improve things. She pessimistically shook her head and shared that she was also having difficulty accessing health care for herself. If even a medical professional can’t access the care they need, how bad are the odds for the rest of us?

In the end, my wrist wasn’t broken, which is more than I can say for our ailing health-care system.

Toula Drimonis is a Montreal journalist and the author of We, the Others: Allophones, Immigrants, and Belonging in Canada. She can be reached on X @toulastake

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