It’s September, and Stacey Hume is next to her dad’s hospital bed in the palliative ward of Edmonton’s Grey Nuns Community Hospital. She, along with her mom and sister, are told by staff that they need to make a choice about her dad.
Either contend with him possibly dying at a red light, alone in the ambulance, or remain in the hospital, where “it could be three, four or five more days of him hanging on like this,” recalled Hume.
Her dad, William Hume, was dying. He had been diagnosed with late-stage gastroesophageal cancer just a few months earlier. William wanted MAID, and was assessed and approved soon after he was diagnosed.
But the procedure is prohibited at Grey Nuns, where William was admitted, as it was the only Edmonton hospital with an ER bed available. The hospital is operated by Covenant Health — a publicly funded, Catholic health-care provider in Alberta — which does not allow MAID to be administered at any of its sites. William would have to be transferred to another facility.
That really sucks. My friends dad had that, he chose MAID and was through the procedure in a week. He had already suffered for many months leading up to diagnosis and didn’t want to have 4-12 weeks of more pain. He left on his own terms.
This saddens me much.
Growing up, I witness family members denying life-saving care on religious grounds, while on the same branch of the family another person died because they could not afford the exams and treatment (we only learned after the death).
I wish we could keep ignorance away from public funded institutions (and private too) and provide people with the care they need with love and respect.
Publicly funded institutions have no business imposing their own bullshit selfish religious healthcare ideals on the public.
If they’re private they can do what they want.
Even if they’re private they should still have to abide by legal medical practices. They shouldn’t get to pick and choose what procedures they morally agree with.
Guess it depends if you choose to be there by choice because you agree with their policies or if you are taken there because there’s no viable alternative.
If you choose to follow their choices then sure. Otherwise they do what you tell them.
I don’t personally think any facility should be forced to provide MAID. Much as no individual staff should be requiredto. Rather the transfer protocols are what could use an update or spotlight.
Why must the patient be transfered with no family; particularly when it was not a time sensitive transfer? Why is the transfer vehcile unable to keep the patient alive for the journey; in this case it was an elective procedure, but that same failing would exist for a non-elective procude the hospital may be unable to treat?
I’m not a medical person, but my systems viewpoint is wondering what patient transfer is so precarious.
The man was suffering unnecessarily and was not allowed to make a totally legal decision about his own body. The transfer system is what it is and it certainly wasn’t going to change in the time he had left. Your “systems viewpoint” is irrelevant.
I’m obviously not suggesting that the transfer system would change in the duration of William Hume’s suffering.
My point is that his suffering could be a symptom of a transfer system issue the requires resolution. By resolving THAT probable issue; we can both ensure Hume’s suffering is not in vien AND reduce future unnecessary suffering, long term effects, and/or death.
To be clear, I am fully supportive of MAID and have a living will of MAID criteria to make decisions easier on my family. My grandfather-in-law didn’t take the MAID route in September, simply because ceasing medication was a quicker option.
I’m also supportive of facilities not providing MAID, but not for uniquely religious reasons. I’m also not opposed to the Québec legislation that requires all palliative facilities to provide it. It can even make it easier for facilities to not provide MAID by just also not providing palliative (though that comes with a transfer requirement for all palliative patients…)
It’s precarious because the ruling government has ruined it on purpose. They are trashing things and breaking systems literally on purpose, so they can rebuild everything in the christian heritage fascist vision they have cooked up in their minds. Once they force separation somehow, and of course they’ll make sure the pockets of their supporters as well as their own will be lined with gold each step along the way.
Most Albertans stand by doing nothing while they do all of this. That’s why this is happening, sorry for the long-winded explanation. Personally I think this is pretty cruel, whether you agree with MAID or not. Cruelty against its citizens also seems to be a key goal of the sitting government.
Eh, I would say quite a lot of Albertans have done quite a bit. The protests, attempted recalls, and other attempts to get these maniacs out of our legislature are happening but… we’re a little outnumbered and outfunded.
It would be a big help if we could ban foreign media conglomerates like Post Media from being the primary way 95% of our people got their “news” (ie propaganda propping up the traitors).
So, in Quebec, according to this article, they passed a law requiring facilities to let it happen on-site.
That’s all that needs to happen, a hospital has any specific equipment on hand, and be willing to let in a doctor who is OK with it.
I agree with you, that no individual person should be forced to kill someone, but a hospital isn’t a person and doesn’t have feelings. There’s a very reasonable chance someone works there who would have been OK with providing MAID, but doesn’t, and even if 100% of the doctors there weren’t OK with it, it’s a lot simpler to have a doctor travel than it is to arrange a whole new bed, ambulance, on-site doctor, and family.
To me at least, that IS negligence. It’s not a violation of any individual’s beliefs that MAID happens in their general vicinity, and it’s just not true that requiring a facility to allow it results in requiring individuals to perform it.
Also, less relevant, it’s not necessarily that the vehicle can’t keep the patient alive, it’s just that there is a chance of the patient passing at any time, and that time might be during transport in an ambulance that is designed for emergencies first and doesn’t accommodate families.
Yeah, in my diagonal read, I don’t think I captured that the facility was refusing MAID solely on religious grounds. That’s not kosher.
