Hallway medicine without the medicine By: Niigaan Sinclair Posted: 7:00 PM CST Friday, Jan. 27, 2023

Opinion

I’m driving home on a Monday when my sister calls.

“Dad has an irregular heartbeat,” she explains. “He was at the doctor’s office and told to go to emergency immediately.”

I say I’ll meet them there.

Dad has had heart problems since having a stroke 15 years ago. Anyone who knows strokes knows that a heart attack can trigger one and vice versa.

Dad’s mother also died from a stroke — so we take these signs very seriously.

I arrive at St. Boniface Hospital emergency at 7 p.m. It is crowded, and the television info board declares there are 72 people in front of us, 41 who are “in treatment,” and 31 who are “waiting.”

My sister speaks to a nurse and explains dad’s condition. She quickly tests him and says he is not critical but “needs to be seen.” We are told he will be triaged soon.

Because of the Manitoba government’s closing of three ERs in Winnipeg and “centralizing” specific services for “efficiency,” heart patients have no choice but to go to St. B. It’s the only place where equipment and expertise is really available.

Its emergency room is under construction, as a new facility is built.

This night, ER patients wait in a cramped, small and bare room, sitting in three rows of plastic chairs separated by plastic dividers. Loved ones have to stand beside them.

One friend jokingly tells me to get Dad to have a real heart attack and his condition will then be taken seriously. We later find out she was right.

There are no tables or magazines. A security desk with two personnel is in the corner.

After 90 minutes, Dad is triaged and told to go back to his chair.

The numbers on the info board have not changed; they’ve gotten worse — 75 people are now in treatment or waiting.

For four hours, my sister and I take turns caring for our father and communicating with loved ones. We pray he will be seen soon. The info board says “five-plus hours,” but the couple beside us have been waiting for eight.

One friend jokingly tells me to get Dad to have a real heart attack and his condition will then be taken seriously. We later find out she was right.

It’s now after midnight. Dad has missed his evening blood circulation medication. Not a big deal, he can take his next dose with breakfast — or so we think.

Over three more hours in emergency, we witness the violent removal of one man, a dozen police officers and paramedics escorting patients in and out, and a surprisingly inconsistent system of checking people sleeping in chairs.

The policy of hourly checks due to the Brian Sinclair case — the wheelchair-bound man who, in 2008, sat in a Health Sciences Centre emergency room for more than 30 hours and died before someone checked on him — apparently doesn’t apply at St. B emergency.

By 4 a.m. (and likely from lack of sleep), I have had enough. I demand to see someone. I am told by a nurse they are “very busy.”

I tell them my father’s irregular heartbeat has now turned into a very tight chest, trouble breathing and a great deal of pain.

She hands me the phone number for complaints, telling me staff has been “begging for anyone to do something about how bad things are here.”

I am informed we are waiting so long because St. Boniface Hospital — the only real option for heart patients in Manitoba — has no heart monitor bed available.

Let that sink in for a moment. It’s a weekday. So much for “streamlining” the health-care system.

Desperate, I tell the nurse my father is former senator Murray Sinclair, the first Indigenous judge appointed in Manitoba and, later, the chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.

I’m not above fighting for my dad’s life and using his celebrity to do so. I have heard of unwritten rules in Manitoba’s health-care system that famous people don’t have to wait like the public does — which is verified by multiple doctors and nurses, shocked my father “wasn’t recognized” and “had to wait so long.”

The nurse is nice, but tells me there’s nothing she can do.

She hands me the phone number for complaints, telling me staff has been “begging for anyone to do something about how bad things are here.”

An hour later, we get a cot in a hallway, where two dozen other patients are sleeping, too. It’s hallway medicine– without the medicine.

I demand a bed for Dad, because his heart issue has turned into five problems: a lack of sleep, missed medication, pain, compromised circulation and tightening breathing.

An hour later, we get a cot in a hallway, where two dozen other patients are sleeping, too. It’s hallway medicine — without the medicine.

I am then told the ER has sheets available but no pillows.

My sister and I fold up our jackets and place them underneath our father’s head. He sleeps.

Dad is finally admitted at 11 a.m., 16 hours after we arrive. A doctor arrives two hours after that. He diagnoses heart failure and admits Dad into hospital for a week.

This is life for a heart patient in Manitoba’s emergency health-care system in 2023.

Just don’t have an emergency and you’ll be fine.

niigaan.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca

Niigaan Sinclair
Columnist

Niigaan Sinclair is Anishinaabe and is a columnist at the Winnipeg Free Press.

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