Here are stories from other Metroland newspapers.

BRAMPTON

Jocelyn Gardner is a Peel Region grandmother who spends her days afraid for her grandson's life.

Her fear is Ontario will not approve the use of his medication in time to have him receive the same medical treatment at home that he now flies to the U.S. for every six months.

Michael Spiridakis, her grandson, is five and a half, and has dealt with neo-natal onset multi-inflammatory disease, a rare condition, his whole life. He lives with his mother, Karen Atkinson, in Brampton.

Michael travels to Bethesda, Md., every six months for Anakinra, a drug that is part of a five-year trial at the National Institutes of Health. When that trial is over in 18 months, Michael's family doesn't know what they will do. "He will regress immediately, within 24 hours," Ms. Atkinson said. "The funny part is, the Ontario government will step in and help with hearing aids, physical therapy, and it will cost taxpayers thousands. But they won't step in for the medication."

BURLINGTON

Burlington's Rev. Robert Shorten is surprised Ontarians are still having to cross into the United States for health care.

When Rev. Shorten, 82, crossed the border for prostate cancer treatment at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo a decade ago, the Province paid for his medical costs, as the OHIP still does for growing numbers of Ontarians today.

"I just assumed that we had enough equipment here so that people wouldn't need to do that anymore," Rev. Shorten said.

NORTH PEEL

When Robert Gabriele Sr. had medical problems, his family doctor thought it might be cancer. Mr. Gabriele got his answer by going to a U.S. medical centre, something he says he would do again today.

An enlargement of the prostate sent him to his Canadian doctor four years ago for a prostate specific antigen test to screen for cancer.

"I went for five to six (PSA) tests all in a row" because of inconclusive results, Mr. Gabriele said.

Other tests also failed to determine if he had cancer, including an MRI and CAT scan.

Mr. Gabriele, 53, said his doctor told him he would have to queue up again to have the tests redone, or go to the U.S. for an answer.

"My family practitioner said that there is nothing in Canada I could get quick enough," he said.

So Mr. Gabriele hopped a plane for Minnesota, paid $8,000 to the Mayo Clinic and, in one day, had a full urologic examination, flow tests, blood tests, an MRI, an ultrasound and a cystoscopy, to examine his bladder.

No cancer was found.

GUELPH

John Pembleton credits unorthodox therapy he paid for in New York state when he was younger for allowing him to walk, golf and rake leaves today.

Mr. Pembleton, 75, says he lived for years with painful circulation diagnosed by doctors as claudication, a cramping in the lower legs caused by poor blood flow.

As thousands of Ontarians still do today, Mr. Pembleton looked south for options not available at home.

The chelation therapy he received in the '90s is still controversial and approved by most medical bodies only for removing mercury and toxic metals from the body.

But the Guelph retiree agreed when his son encouraged him to try chelation, a dose of medication delivered by an intravenous line. Mr. Pembleton's choice of treatment was far from mainline, but he says he saw no available options here.

HAMILTON

For nearly three years, Brandon Taylor lived in agony with a herniated disc.

The now 22-year-old Hamilton student and his father, Stuart, were told open back surgery at Brandon's age could be dangerous.

The wait to see a specialist who could help decide treatment was up to a year, they were told. The best the Ontario health system could offer was prescription painkillers.

In August 2007, Stuart Taylor packed up his son and agreed to pay $28,000 in Florida for minimally invasive laser microsurgery. The treatment worked for Brandon, now a fourth-year engineering student at McMaster University.

But father and son are embroiled in a bitter battle with OHIP to have the medical costs reimbursed.

The Ontario officials who decide whether out-of-country treatment should be paid by public health insurance say the Taylors broke the rules. OHIP states the Taylors did not apply for pre-approval as required and the Florida surgery does not qualify as it is considered experimental here.

"Every single person I have spoken to, except OHIP, says I did the right thing," says Stuart Taylor, who mortgaged his house to pay for treatment.

LITTLE BRITAIN

It took Ken Christie one day and $800 of his own money to get an MRI in Buffalo when he was told his wait in Ontario could be up to five months.

Mr. Christie had been referred to a specialist out of concern that double vision, and his drooping eye, could be signs of a brain aneurysm, a bulging artery that can rupture and cause bleeding in the brain. His symptoms eventually disappeared.

But the Kawartha Lakes hobby farmer is still annoyed, all these years later, he had to go south of the border for care he believes he should have received in Ontario.

Mr. Christie's U.S. MRI took place in 2001, the year a surge in out-of-country medical travel began.

NIAGARA

Pelham resident Don Campbell did five years ago what a growing number of Ontario patients are electing to do today.

Told he might have to wait three months for an MRI in Ontario, Mr. Campbell crossed the border to Buffalo and paid for his own. He says he needed the scan to show doctors at a Hamilton hospital to help with his upper back treatment.

"The doctor told me that if I had waited for the two months or three months it was going to take to have this done in Ontario, I would have been in a wheelchair," Mr. Campbell says.

Clogged wait lists for MRIs and CTs continue in Ontario today.

As of Nov. 1, government figures show, 74,867 Ontarians are waiting for an MRI -- almost as many people as live in Niagara Falls.

OAKVILLE

Oakville's Kelly Rosettani is happy with the quick treatment she was able to get in the United States for her six-year-old daughter's curved spine.

When Ms. Rosettani's daughter, Jenna Mayer, went in August for a regular checkup, the doctor said he wanted her to have an X-ray because it looked as if she might have scoliosis, a curvature of the spine.

A Toronto doctor ordered an MRI, and mentioned that, depending on its outcome, Jenna might need a brace. But the family was unsatisfied by an MRI wait time of two to six months.

In October, the family went to the U.S. In less than six weeks, they had consulted at an American children's hospital, seen a specialist in Virginia, acquired a medical brace for Jenna and returned home.

The family believes they did the right thing by going to the U.S.

"We want people to know that you do not necessarily have to wait, you can get excellent treatment outside the country," Ms. Rosettani said.

OTTAWA

At 34, Lisa Nancarrow was told her only option was to go home and prepare to die.

There was nothing more the Ontario health-care system could do to treat the tumours encasing her vital organs and invading her system, she was told.

That was until her family found a clinical trial at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, the only place in the world offering the prospect of salvation for adults with severe neurofibromatosis.

The $50,000 US price tag didn't discourage her family. Surely, they thought, OHIP would come through and help with what was Ms. Nancarrow's only option.

Now, on top of fighting for her life, Ms. Nancarrow is facing off against the system she thought was meant to help her. OHIP has denied her claim, citing Ontario's policy against funding clinical trials.

The family is now tangled in a mess of appeals and daunting hospital bills.

"This is more stressful than facing the disease," she said. "The two years of not knowing what I was facing was awful, but once you get diagnosed you think, 'OK, let's fight it.' Then you're like, 'Oh, now I've got to find a way to pay for it? How am I going to pay for it? I don't know.' ... It's happened to me a couple of times that I've got so stressed that I've got sick."

INNISFILL

If she had to do it over again, Wilhelmina Tuininga would cross the border for an MRI.

She knows what it's like to wait too long in pain for a diagnostic test.

The 75-year-old Innisfil resident experienced a wait-time episode a growing number of Ontarians are enduring every day. Injured many years ago when she fell off a ladder onto her back, Ms. Tuininga's long-time pain problem came to the attention of a new doctor and an MRI was ordered for this spring.

Her wait turned out to be eight months.

"I think it's disgusting that somebody has to wait that long."

TORONTO

Carol Mark, a registered nurse from Toronto, was afraid and desperate after finding a lump in her right breast in August 2007.

It took eight months from the time she discovered the lump, to her initial appointment with her GP, to a mammogram (after which she was told the lump was non-malignant) to a bioposy, which confirmed that the tumour was cancerous.

Doctors told her they wanted to do a lumpectomy. Already frustrated with the wait and the system, Ms. Mark wanted a second opinion.

She travelled to the Mayo Clinic where doctors found three more tumours (one in her right breast, which had been mammogrammed, and two more in her left) that would have been missed had she opted for the lumpectomy in Ontario. On the advice of Mayo doctors, Ms. Mark was rushed into surgery where she received a double mastectomy.

She paid for the surgery herself, and now, on top of the fight for her life, she is battling for OHIP to reimburse her $7,774.50 -- for surgery to remove the tumours the Ontario specialists missed and for the cost of the MRI that found the cancer.