It’s another horror story in Quebec’s emergency rooms. The hundredth? The thousandth? Who knows? This time, it’s the revolting story of Normand Meunier.
Severely physically disabled, in the emergency room of Saint-Jérôme hospital, he was left for several days in the corridor on a common stretcher. However, his partner had informed the emergency room that he absolutely needed an “alternating pressure” mattress.
Result: according to the Radio-Canada report, Mr. Meunier “developed a major pressure ulcer on his buttocks”. Every year, in our hospitals and CHSLDs, 3,700 Quebecers “find themselves with a pressure ulcer”. This is unjustifiable.
That of Normand Meunier made him suffer so much that he preferred to request medical assistance in dying (AMM). He was only 66 years old. He died at his home on March 29.
If Quebec has become the epicenter of MAID in the country, we must ask ourselves if the lamentable state of the health network does not also have something to do with it.
In short, another story worthy of the third world. The media have been full of them for a long time. So much so that we get used to it without realizing it. Except, of course, when it happens to someone close to you or to yourself…
Obviously, as François Legault would say, no one fights on the buses for that. Fortunately, we also save lives in the emergency room.
Still, avoidable deaths and humans herded like cattle for days in a busy corridor have become almost commonplace.
Fear of emergency
However, there is nothing normal about Quebecers being completely afraid of going to the emergency room. How many people wake up with undetected cancers or conditions that have become chronic due to lack of a family doctor, but also due to fear of being forgotten in an emergency corridor?
It’s even worse when you land there with a physical, intellectual or cognitive disability. Not to mention all those who arrive there alone, without anyone to accompany them and defend their rights.
Normand Meunier had his partner to support him, but she would not have been listened to. Imagine arriving at the emergency room disabled AND alone.
Demand better
For decades, from press briefings to crisis units, the situation in our emergencies has nevertheless continued to deteriorate.
There are advanced countries which, perhaps more brilliant than here, but not richer, have functional, accessible and human emergencies. Why would this be inconceivable in Quebec?
Regardless of the government, would our decision-makers and managers be so lost? However, Quebec is capable of better. And U.S?
Why do we accept that it is so difficult, unless you are in cardiac arrest, to get treatment quickly and well in an emergency paid for at great expense by public funds? Would we still be a docile people?
How can we not think of the legendary words of the great poet, the late Claude Péloquin? Engraved on the walls of the Grand Théâtre de Québec, they are more relevant than ever: “You are not sick of dying, you bunch of cellars! That’s enough!”
To quote the theater presentation, these words are indeed “a call to life, a cry against injustice and a denunciation of death in all its forms”. It would be time to rediscover them, if I dare say, urgently.
Not to be outraged for the sake of being outraged, but to demand that things finally change… for the better.