The hardest part was trying to set up an account on the website to book an appointment, but it…read moreturns out I had picked the one day where the website was down. (Figures). I picked this location because it had an appointment time that worked for me. Got there at my appointment time and once the nurse helped me through the entire process. I got to sit and eat a bag of salty snacks and drink water before I was checked in. Honestly, it took longer to check in and process the paperwork than it did to actually give blood. After that, they made sure I sat in the recovery part of the clinic and eat some recovery snacks before I was allowed to go. All throughout the process I was thanked left and right for making the appointment and coming in to donate blood. You can only donate blood a few times a year, so I will be making another appointment as soon as I can. I would encourage everyone to donate blood if they are eligible.

Originally I wanted to grab an appointment at the Oak Street location, but had to wait for a week,…read morebut found that the Surrey location was available the next day. Made an online appointment at 1pm. Prior to going I completed the questionnaire in the app and off I went. Was a bit of a long drive drive, but was worth it since it's giving blood to help others...AND thank goodness for GPS. When I arrived I was third in line outside of the office. (COVID protocol), and was greeted warmly, was asked a set of questions, took my temperature and off to the waiting area after check in. Waited only a few minutes after reading the precautions before I went to get my hemoglobin tested. 8 minutes to draw my 450ml of blood and I was done. The staff were super friendly and great conversationalists and genuinely care. Glad I came to this location. Don't forget the best part...cookies, juices, snacks for recovery. I learned something new..they provide a sticker to stick onto you shirt to identify that you just gave blood should a first responder is required. Smart!!

Friendly staff, quick time there. I've given a lot of my…read moreblood there! I feel good doing this.

Usually pretty quick. Unfortunately have had to wait several times over 20 mins prior to giving…read moreblood.

Quick if you're going in for urine sample. Loved that staffers apologize for keeping you waiting in…read moreline. Waiting room seemed full at 3 pm. Somebody in front of me was handing in a stool sample. Yikes. God bless whoever deals with those.

Perhaps I came here on an unusually busy morning. Perhaps, since I worked in labs in Seattle for…read morethe past seven years, I am unfairly comparing this lab to those in the States. Perhaps I got a phlebotomist having an off-day. All I know is, my experience at this lab recently was not the best and I am not planning on returning here. Had a "new patient" appointment with a doctor nearby who surprisingly ordered some bloodwork for me. I hadn't expected lab work to be ordered but, luckily, I was already fasting, and the doctor said there was a lab a block away, so I decided to just get it over with. I thought I'd be in and out quickly, as the labs ordered were few and commonplace (nothing complicated or exotic, lol!), and I have fabulous veins (have never had a problem with blood draws. I'm even a regular blood donor!). How wrong I was. The waiting room was full of people, waiting. There was a long line of people waiting to check in, with only one person at the counter doing the check-ins (after 10 minutes, another person joined her to help, thankfully). There's no privacy at all; as I waited in line for my turn, I heard the counter lady advise a woman checking in about the needed urine sample (ALL the details), and other tests ordered. This is SUCH a no-no in the States, where privacy issues are regarded so seriously. Other patients in a lab or doctor's office are never supposed to hear the details of other patents' orders. I gather people can make appointments online, which is great, but for those of us who walk-in, the waiting can be crazy-long. And after I waited 20-25 minutes or so after checking in, there was no-one available for me to ask for a status check (my kid was with me and I didn't want her to be too late to school). I was called to the back after a 40-45 minute wait. It really felt like a cattle call. I was sent to a tiny cubicle where I passed other patients in other cubicles in the process of getting bloods drawn. I heard all about all the tests being ordered for the patients in the cubicles in front and behind me (again, I consider this a breach of privacy. I heard all about the breath test and blood tests and urine tests ordered for the folks around me, as well as their names and dates of birth - since we all have to verify our identities, All this info should be done in private!). I won't mention my phlebotomist by name, but although she was sweet, she wasn't adept at her job. She dismissed my suggestion to draw from my left antecubital vein (the most prominent I have and the chosen site for all blood draws and blood donations), instead opting to go with a smaller vein on the right arm (my writing arm). At least she used a butterfly needle (small) but man, it still hurt like the Dickens! And she didn't get the vein! She went with a larger vein in the right antecubital and got it, but man, it too hurt like hell! Stung! Badly! I give blood and have blood work done regulary and it has never stung, ever! Sometimes there may be a momentary pinch, but this was different. And later that evening, my right arm was still tender where she poked me twice. I asked the phlebotomist how I might be able to check my results online. She said she'd leave the information for me "up front", to "pick up when I leave", as I was new to the LifeLabs system and had to get some info to create an account. Well, when I left, there was nobody in the front to ask, and since I had been there a good hour and my kid was late for school, I just left. Argh.

Great place to make a bit of quick easy extra cash in an hour or two or soeasy~peasey.read more

They are DISGUSTING creatures. A nurse came out of the bathroom, scratching their ass and didn't…read morechange the gloves; touching the papers! Their cleaning products are not for procedures of taking blood as eucalyptus contaminates the samples. Cleaning should be unscented but no, they like to keep allergens around. They keep touching their faces, the backside, bodily liquids, and soil!!! I won't be explicit but know what I say... they spread their biohazards. They kicked out my sister for having an allergy on their eucalyptus. Bad care and consideration for others. My mom nurse said the environment they surround you with is really unsanitary and unprofessional and I agree.

Very convenient location for anyone working downtown (except maybe Yaletown)…read more If you book an appointment, you can complete the questionnaire and pamphlet ahead of time. This way, you just walk in and grab a number to do the screening. The whole process for me is generally 45 minutes. They're open early morning until early afternoon. It does get busier around lunch time on weekdays. Staff are always super friendly, and willing to take the time to explain things to you. I've never had any complications, but there are enough nurses on hand to accomodate anything that might come up. This location only does whole blood. To donate platelets or plasma, you have to go to the Oak St location. That's also where your blood is shipped to be tested and/or sent off.

Ok, so I used to donate blood regularly when I lived in Montreal, and then later, when I lived in…read morethe States for the past 25 years. But I hadn't donated in the past 3-4 years, and then I moved here to Vancouver and have been busy with the "big move" and life in general and time just got away with me. Fast forward to today. I was in a funk, in a dark mood. Walking downtown to do various errands, I literally stumbled upon a placard on the sidewalk "Donate Blood Today!", so on a whim, I went inside and upstairs to register and donate. I wasn't in their database so I went through the whole process, first with a super nice guy at the front desk who greeted me and put all my info in the system and explained the ropes to me. Then I went to a cubicle to answer a long bunch of medical and personal questions on a tablet of sorts, then I was given a pamphlet to read and a number. Then a friendly gal named Jazzy ushered me into a private room to go over my answers and check my iron and blood pressure and temp (she was amazing!). Then I waited until my number was called, and .... well, you know the rest! The whole procedure was painless (literally, I didn't feel a thing. The tech was incredible. I wish I took note of her name. SOOO good and very nice), and fairly quick, and there were great snacks and juices (and stickers!) bestowed on me when it was all done. I left the clinic feeling so much better than I did when I went in. I wholeheartedly recommend donating blood when you're in a bad mood; nothing helps more than knowing you are taking positive action in doing a good deed and tangibly helping another person. Well, that or wine. :)

My cousin M. L. is the sweetest person you would ever meet, and she has been under a heavy…read moremedication protocol at the hands of DR. VIJAY NATARAJAN and RAVENSONG, which has turned her into a shell of the person she used to be. She has many loving family and friends in her corner. We are all trying to get her help, but DR. VIJAY NATARAJAN and RAVENSONG are refusing to see her or adjust her medicine to let her get the life-saving liver transplant she needs. Please call this DR. VIJAY NATARAJAN and RAVENSONG at (604) 709-6400, to demand that he do something to help her. She has some mental illnesses that require medication, yes, but DR. VIJAY NATARAJAN at RAVENSONG has increased her medication over the years, and for the past 10-15 years, she has become more and more foggy, hesitant and indecisive in her thinking. She has put on so much weight that it has increased her physical slowness and clumsiness, and she sweats and gets out of breath at the slightest exertion. It is no wonder that we have all been extremely concerned about her. She is unable to even make herself a simple meal or even pour herself a drink without spilling it all over the floor and taking half an hour just to wipe it up. She is extremely debilitated and she is getting no help, and we are feeling desperate as we watch her crumbling before our very eyes. We knew something was seriously wrong, but until our recent repeated visits to Vancouver General Hospital Emergency Department, we did not realize that she was so over-medicated, and this excess medication has been poisoning her liver, first causing diagnosis of fatty liver disease, now progressing to cirrhosis of the liver. I always thought cirrhosis of the liver was only caused by alcohol however, my cousin does not drink alcohol on any sort of regular basis; so, by observation and deduction, it would appear that she is likely being slowly poisoned with excess medication by her psychiatrist DR. VIJAY NATARAJAN and RAVENSONG, unless a medical professional advises us otherwise, but this is the information that we have been given. We have been told by her medical team, that my cousin needs to have a reduction of her medications in order to be added to the liver transplant list, and we have brought her over and over to the Vancouver General Hospital Emergency Department to try to get her some help. We've spent dozens of hours sitting in the VGH waiting room, only to have my cousin sent home. Even the time when she had ammonia levels so dangerous they thought it could possibly be deadly, so the UBC Emergency Department - who had done the blood test the day before - sent the paramedics along with the police to bring her to the Vancouver General Hospital Emergency Department. The Vancouver General Hospital Emergency Department sent her home, in her overdrugged state, all on her own at 2 in the morning, when she got scammed by an Uber driver who took advantage of her foggy state and charged her hundreds of dollars by scamming her credit card. We have been informed that the only one who can change her medicine is DR. VIJAY NATARAJAN and RAVENSONG, so my cousin made an appointment with him, as her prescribing psychiatrist. He (DR. VIJAY NATARAJAN and RAVENSONG)apparently cancelled this appointment, telling my cousin that her appointment is "....cancelled until further notice". What are we to think of that?? Is DR. VIJAY NATARAJAN at RAVENSONG telling my cousin that he doesn't want to see her anymore??? For what reasons??? On what grounds?? DR. VIJAY NATARAJAN and RAVENSONG, are you simply dismissing her because you don't want to bother??? Do you, DR. VIJAY NATARAJAN and RAVENSONG want to just let my cousin die of the liver disease that you appear to have caused by years of prescribing excess dosages of medication??? I wonder what is going on here and I am informing you, the public, because DR. VIJAY NATARAJAN and RAVENSONG need to be held to accountable, for if we lose her now, her blood is on the hands of DR. VIJAY NATARAJAN and RAVENSONG, in my opinion. I cannot see any other way to take this indifference and refusal to see the patient for whom he is prescribing all these medicines, so DR. VIJAY NATARAJAN and RAVENSONG, since you will not take our phone calls or see my cousin, I hope that you will see and notice my plea here on your page. PLEASE speak up for yourself, DR. VIJAY NATARAJAN and RAVENSONG: why are you letting my cousin die before the eyes of her family and friends?? We all love her and we hate to see her fall through the cracks this way and we can do nothing else but hold you, DR. VIJAY NATARAJAN and RAVENSONG, personally responsible. What can you possibly say for yourself? My cousin is getting sicker by the day. Today, she is at the point of speaking gibberish and being unable to get out of bed and spitting up blood. The paramedics have taken her to emergency for she is in serious condition and it appears that it is solely due to you, DR. VIJAY

Ravensong is a "walk-in" clinic operated by the Vancouver Coastal Health cartel. VCH, in turn is…read morein bed with law-enforcement through divisions like ACT (Assertive Community Treatment), and presumably also other angles. I've been living in section-8 housing for about two years as an eventual consequence of police corruption, which included the making of false statements to an ER psychiatric robot at VGH. I was referred to Ravensong subsequently. You might think that section-8 housing is better than no housing, but the fact of the matter is that I was healthier and happier living in an abandoned garage with a car-battery to provide lighting. There was clean water and a clean toilet nearby as well. Apparently I was doing too well on my own and the police intervened -- and not because of anything untoward I did in the neighborhood. My psychiatrist at Ravensong, a Dr. Nelekant (spelling?) spent a lot of time talking about this and that, but never actually explored my delusions. After about a year he released me from his direct care and forced monthly injections after I requested a board review. He did not want to got to the tribunal. My diagnosis of a "delusional disorder" remains completely unqualified and as a consequence I don't know if I think I'm the reincarnation of Napoleon, or whether my delusions are concerned with the cosmological significance of Abrahamic religons. I think they know what my delusions are, but the Doctors at Ravensong have found an excuse to keep that information from me. This may be related to the fact that Ravensong and the operators of the section-8 housing are in close collaboration and can soak the province for billable hours without competent oversight. Thus it turns out that for their unstated reasons, I have had exactly zero privacy or security where I am forced to live. They also steal things and have apparently used that access to ensure I am constantly bothered by relatively minor but persistent abdominal pain and diarrhea -- which is completely mysterious to my "family doctor" at Ravensong. My computer now has government-class spyware on it that makes it all but useless for serious work. I think the various "provocations" I've experienced here are intended to "prove" that I need to be continually medicated as all the sneaking around behind my back and the molestation of my belongings is exceptionally disturbing. Fortunately, this sort of thing has happened before elsewhere in Canada and I am able to react more intelligently than someone who might be dealing with this sort of shit for the first time. My physical health problems were "handled" by a Dr. Michael Burns, who quit or retired around December of 2023. I was referred to the Crossroad Clinic instead of another doctor at Ravensong for reasons unknown. The Crossroad clinic has it's own negative reviews, and indeed my experience arranging a first meeting was fraught with stupid problems. While this was going on Dr. Ko from Ravensong called up out of the blue to arrange an appointment. I'm not even sure if Dr. Ko is an actual doctor, and I suspect if I asked him for the details about his medical degree he would become unreasonably defensive. Whatever the case may be, he thinks he's an expert on spinal injuries and more, thus there is no need for a referral to a specialist. To be fair, Dr. Burns also felt no need for a specialist referral. Possibly this is because I presented at VGH with serious back-pain of mysterious origin near the beginning of the pandemic; but no exam of my lower-back was ever done and I was referred directly to their psychiatric unit. Consequently I walked around for months afterwards with debilitating pain until it slowly went away. I apparently had COVID as well, which also went untreated and resulted in significant lung damage. It's looking like the main problem is that VCH is a Christian organization, with possible ties to the dangerous Christian Science cult. In any event, as an orthodox atheist, I am apparently an existential threat to many corrupt Christians and I think at this point the main reason for the atrocious healthcare I have received from Ravensong is the indirect result of the authoritarian mobilization of Christian extremists we are seeing in North America. I think they would be happy if they could string me along without actually doing anything competent about my health issues until I sicken and die. They would be helped-along by the undercover goon-squad operating in the building I live in, as well as the goons they deploy in public to "probe" the psychology of people in their care. Vancouver Coastal Health has "thousands of employees" according to their FOI department, and of course I've only met a small handful. But for what I have experienced to persist for more than three years requires a corrupt corporate culture. My advice would be to avoid Ravensong and Vancouver Coastal Health wherever possible. They really suck.

This review is for eyelash extensions and manicure services I got from Cecil B. I am yet to try…read moreother services/treatments they offer. I didn't have the issue other clients apparently had. Simone (eyelash) and Candice (nail) were both professional and friendly. They didn't force any of the products on me and they didn't even mention the products and services they have/provide unless you ask them. The staff are all friendly and the place is very clean. Services/treatments are reasonably priced. Parking is free. Consultation is free. I am definitely coming back and would recommend to friends and family. I'm happy with Cecil B.

I've been the Cecil B twice for facials. The first facial was unremarkable, except that I spent at…read moreleast 25 minutes of the 60 minute treatment listening to a shill for Swiss Line skin products. That's 24 minutes too much. They were trying to get me to pay $115 for a 75ml tube of product made by a company I've never ever heard of. The second spa treatment, done yesterday, was likewise underwhelming. What is really upsetting is that, due to overaggressive extractions, I am now covered in pin-prick-like, red wounds where pores were traumatised when they'd be better left alone. What's worse is that my esthetician, who had long nails, didn't even wear gloves to do the extractions, which I discovered too late. The extractions actually brought up tears, and I am the type of person who can sit through brazilian waxes and blood donations with a buddha-like smile on my face. I feel like I paid well over $135 for a skin treatment that left me in worse shape than I started. I ran into a friend the today, who, taking one look at my face, said "what did I tell you about doing your own extractions! You're going to get an infection!" I went back today to show the shop manager what was going on. I wasn't looking for refunds or complimentary services, as I kept reiterating, but she kept going on and on about how I should really let her show me a few lines of skin care products that would help minimise the need for extractions. Unbelievable. Long and short is that I won't go back, and would tell anyone (that I like) to steer clear.