On November 8, my 85-year-old husband was operated on to remove a large cancerous tumor in his left lung. After the operation, he was transferred to intensive care, where I suffered a first shock. The unit is at maximum capacity, the patients are obviously in very bad shape. But in unity it is the party. Things go on from one side of the unit to the other, doctors, nurses, orderlies, we chat and call out to each other without the slightest respect for the patients. I ask a nurse if it’s still noisy. She gives me a sheepish smile.
All upstairs rooms are closed due to lack of staff. Luckily, my husband, who is in great shape for his age, recovers quickly enough to be transferred that same evening to a six-bed room. What happened to the order of silence and respect for patients?
In February, my spouse starts coughing again. I have no medical expertise, but my first concern is a recurrence of his cancer. His attending physician diagnosed pneumonia. A first treatment with antibiotics does not solve the problem. I repeat the possibility of a recurrence of the cancer, but my layman’s opinion is dismissed out of hand, a recurrence is unlikely so soon after the operation. A second course of antibiotics has no effect.
The doctor then sends him to the hospital for intravenous infusions of antibiotics. As soon as he arrived, I reiterated the possibility of a return of the cancer, but the four doctors who followed one another to analyze his x-rays were adamant: the x-rays were inconclusive. Three radios and two scans later, still no official diagnosis, and we continue the infusions of antibiotics.
I ask then what do we learn in medical school if doctors and radiologists are unable to interpret X-rays and consider a recurrence of a recently operated cancer. Meanwhile, my now 86-year-old husband, successfully lifted from serious surgery, is parked in the hallway of a crowded, noisy emergency room where he can’t rest.
In addition, no one enforces the protocol of two visitors per bed, and it’s a fair: people come and go in a hurry, without masks, without hygiene precautions. After three days, we decide to do a biopsy, because the x-rays are still “inconclusive”. But my spouse caught COVID!
We then park him in isolation in a room where the services are, I am kind, inadequate. I have to stay by his side due to lack of staff, lack of care, professional fatigue and communication problems, because my spouse is English-speaking. If I catch the virus myself, no one will take care of him except for minimal care. His condition is rapidly deteriorating. It’s me who changes his sheets and towels and sees to his needs.
Of course, I catch COVID myself. Prohibition to go to the hospital. His daughter arrives from California to take over. Impossible to talk to the doctors, they don’t answer the messages I leave them, and I have no contact with them. When I call the nursing station, I am told that my spouse’s condition is stable. But I know from his daughter that his condition is seriously deteriorating and that he is having more and more difficulty breathing.
For six days, he was given oxygen through a cannula in his nose while he has a deviated septum that prevents him from breathing through his nose. It took six days and many insistent requests to get him a mask! In the meantime, his need for oxygen rises rapidly. And his condition is undermined by the panic attacks caused by this progressive suffocation.
I go to the hospital, where two doctors tell me quite abruptly that we suspect 90% of a recurrence of cancer aggravated by COVID and that his two lungs are necrotic. According to one of the doctors, he only has a few more days. We are in palliative care…
He was sent home on Monday May 9, and he died on the night of May 10. The man who entered the hospital on April 21 was 86 years old, but strong, vigorous, fully conscious and functional. The man who emerged was a shadow of himself, still conscious, but haggard, weak, anxious and struggling after his breath.
Minister Dubé, we can say that the hospital killed my spouse. The cancer might have gotten the better of him, but I could have enjoyed his loving presence a little longer. This situation was intolerable. I’m not blaming anyone, it’s the system that’s broken. This system that so many of your colleagues have tried to reform without ever getting results!
It’s the lack of manners of the medical profession towards patients, it’s the chronic lack of staff, it’s the lack of file sharing, it’s the communication difficulties. It is a system that has become inhuman. Your ministry must urgently review its reform plans to prevent such inequities from occurring. In the meantime, I lost the person who was dearest to me in the world, and in conditions unworthy of his great soul.