Pain clinic’s slow response angers family

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/06/2012 (5186 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

They watched in horror as their mother suffered weeks of excruciating pain before her death last December.

But it was a letter medical authorities sent to their mom five months after she died that motivated David and Lorraine MacKay to tell the sad story of her last days.

The siblings held a press conference Monday, organized by the provincial Conservatives, at the Manitoba Legislative Building. Then they watched from the visitors’ gallery as Tory health critic Myrna Driedger grilled Health Minister Theresa Oswald during question period about the handling of their mother’s case by Seven Oaks General Hospital and the Health Sciences Centre pain clinic.

Their mother, Frances MacKay, was already well-acquainted with hospitals due to kidney and other health problems. She travelled to Seven Oaks hospital for dialysis three times a week. But last October, she started to feel excruciating pain in her back and pelvic area. It began not long after doctors had inserted a new central line into her body that allowed her to receive dialysis.

Frances complained about her pain and eventually received a referral by the hospital to the HSC pain clinic.

By Nov. 22, though, after a second central line had been inserted because the first had blocked, her son David took her to Seven Oaks emergency because of unbearable pain.

“When I drove her to the hospital that day, she was just screaming the whole way,” he said Monday.

The ER doctor gave her morphine and sent her home after her vital signs, including blood pressure, had stabilized. When David asked the hospital what would be done to find the cause of his mom’s pain, he said the ER doctor replied: “That’s not our job here. Our job is to stabilize the patient and then release them.”

A week later, Lorraine decided to drive her mom to St. Boniface General Hospital. “Literally every breath out of her mouth was a moan,” Lorraine said.

St. Boniface admitted her and did a CT scan and blood tests. Doctors discovered Frances had a severe infection in her lower spine, but by then it was too late to save her. She died in that hospital on Dec. 15 at age 71.

The “final insult” came five months later, the family said. The HSC pain clinic mailed the deceased woman a letter asking her to complete an enclosed questionnaire. She was instructed that once it was filled out and the clinic gathered any other information it needed, she would be contacted for an appointment.

“That’s when the irony of this just hit home” and the family decided to speak out, David said Monday. “People needed to know that suffering in silence is not going to help. No family should have to suffer like our family had to suffer.”

Asked for comment on Monday, the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority issued a statement extending its sincere regrets to the family. It also vowed to “thoroughly investigate this case” and inform the family of its findings.

Outside the house, Oswald said she was “keenly interested” in getting to the bottom of the matter. “A family that is facing the loss of a loved one in circumstances where they believe the health-care system wasn’t as responsive as they need it to be is very concerning to me,” she said.

Oswald also said she was unaware of long waits at HSC’s pain clinic. She said anyone in urgent need should be admitted quickly. “We know they’re getting in right away when they need to,” she told reporters.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca