A woman's last week in pain included 26-hour wait at Fredericton ER, son says
CBC
Mary Lou Beckett was still working with Fredericton seniors at age 79.
She was relatively healthy until last month, when she started getting sick. Unable to eat and in extreme stomach pain, Beckett waited 26 hours at the Dr. Everett Chalmers Hospital emergency department on the last weekend of July.
She was finally seen in the ER and tested, then referred to a cancer specialist in Moncton because of a mass found in her uterus and another pushing up against her bowel.
She was sent home to wait for the appointment, which was eight days away.
After seven days of lying in bed, in pain, she told her husband, Wayne: "I'm not going to make it to Moncton. You've got to call an ambulance."
Paramedics came, took her vitals and told her they were stable. They told her husband to run to the pharmacy and get a Fleet enema, and then they left.
When her husband came back from the pharmacy, Beckett was not responsive. He called paramedics again, but they were unable to revive her.
Beckett's son, Ross Beckett, said he wanted to share his mother's story because no one should suffer so much while waiting for health care.
Even if his mother's death was unavoidable, she was in pain and waited in limbo for too long.
"That's what the health care system is supposed to do," he said. "Get you in, get rid of the pain or at least give you time.
"If they'd operated and she died on the table that would have been more acceptable. … But that didn't happen. She was sent home to lay there in pain."
Beckett's long wait in the hospital is not new. And even if the first team of paramedics had taken her to hospital, she might have continued to wait on a stretcher.
In Moncton, people have been waiting on ambulance stretchers for 24 hours, with the paramedics unable to leave to respond to more calls. In Fredericton a man died while waiting for care in the emergency room.
Staffing shortages have resulted in emergency room closures in Sackville, and other departments closing across the province.
Aggressive patients and lack of security are making nurses feel unsafe in a rural Western Manitoba emergency union, says the Manitoba Nurses Union.
Saskatoon resident Delynne Bortis knew her commute to work Tuesday morning would be particularly difficult.
WARNING: This story contains details of abuse and intimate partner violence:
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