I saved my own life by taking drastic, unusual action at HSC’s emergency room

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/01/2025 (258 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Recently, my PTSD alarm bell went off, upon hearing that yet another human being died waiting for medical care at the Health Sciences Centre Emergency Room.

Why? Because I, too, found myself in this position, on Dec. 31, 2023.

I had awoken feeling off. I fell to the bathroom floor with this swirling sensation, depleting me of all energy. I already had my appendix removed — check. I’ve experienced a kidney stone before and this didn’t feel like that — check — it’s getting worse.

I had my husband call an ambulance.

The first one took me to the HSC ER. If one lives in Tuxedo, that is now where you go unless you have obvious heart issues. (How many living in Tuxedo know that fact?) Just get me there as I’m certain there is something seriously wrong with me.

I arrived, am triaged and placed on a gurney in the hallway, joining the masses.

Initially, I had blood taken. But the rest of the eight hours I spent there were nothing short of hellish.

Paramedics were bringing in prisoners handcuffed to their gurneys. I overheard them saying that the wait times at the Grace Hospital were running up to 32 hours.

I start my numerous attempts to get any nurse passing by to stop and check my vitals. But they make no eye contact, ignore my arm pleading for assessment, as they walk on by.

Thank God I was lucid. The tornado-like feeling was still there, but carries a force to be reckoned with.

What the hell is going on inside my body?

I ask the triage nurse: how much longer? She doesn’t even look at me and says: a lot longer.

What were my options? I intuitively felt my fate was destined, if I didn’t act immediately. Sadly, I was right.

So I asked the nurse again, in the hopes of receiving some help, “Is it safe for me to leave?”

Surely she will advise me that I have yet to see a doctor and I’d be leaving against the advice of the hospital, upon my own recognizance. But no, that’s not what happened. “Leave if you want!”

Dr. Shawn Young, the CEO of the HSC, has been quoted in the Free Press indicating that those brought in assessed as low acuity are checked every couple of hours. I read that in total disbelief. In eight hours, I was not assessed even once, despite my best efforts for attention.

I mustered all my strength to leave. I was placed in a wheelchair, as I could barely walk by then. I fell onto the floor and the triage nurse asked me to get off of it.

My husband is placed in a horrible position to comply with my request to go home and call another ambulance. There are no other viable options left to me.

He reluctantly complied. We made it home with him witnessing me in such a horrific state, but once there, we again call 911.

They arrive swiftly, only this time their response is noticeably different. They immediately check my vitals. They are made aware I have already been to the ER. With great compassion and concern, they carry me downstairs and place me inside, sirens a-blazing.

One of them radios ahead to the same hospital that had no issues with me leaving. “We have a 64-year-old female with perforated bowel and in septic shock. Get an operating room ready.”

I felt emotionally numb. My instincts were right about the dire need for medical attention. But I’m not a doctor.

The reality that I had to advocate for myself in order to save my own life set in. I know I’d have died on that gurney in the hallway if I hadn’t left to call for some intervention.

We arrive and I’m being very quickly prepped for emergency surgery. A doctor comes up to me saying: “Do you know how seriously ill you are?”

“That’s why I came back!”

I am then advised that I might want to make a call to my kids to say goodbye! Oh my God, I thought, I’m really dying.

I retrieved my records months later and I had signs of mottling (end of life) on my feet and hands.

I remember nothing else, as I had a four-hour surgery, resulting in a reversible ileostomy, 11 days with some close calls in the ICU and very questionable practices. Then I spent close to a month on the ward with very disturbing care. But that’s another story.

There was a third ambulance called, as I was released severely dehydrated and with thrush in my mouth.

Shockingly, I had never been officially discharged. If I had not requested my file, no one would ever have noticed that the GP on the ward never filled out those documents. So 17 weeks post-discharge, he was completing that task.

I wonder what his recall was? It’s noted that I had an uneventful stay on the ward. I myself wouldn’t call dry-retching for a month, plus losing 20 pounds, uneventful.

He called both my husband and myself to apologize for the delay. Then, in a surreal manner, called again the next day, first to my husband, then to me, asking if I was going to be taking legal action.

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I replied that, respectfully, I would not be responding and wished him well.

Am I alone in that situation? Never has any physician made such an inquiry of me. Are you getting a sense of our health-care system by now?

The main inexcusable part of this near fatal tale, is that one shouldn’t have to leave an ER and return home in order to call another ambulance, to save one’s life.

Surely we can do better than this!

Harriet Berkal writes from Winnipeg.