A year after their loved one died in hospital, N.S. family struggles to understand what went wrong

Every time they walk by the bedroom of their 30-year-old daughter, Shavonne, at their home in Westville, N.S., Wesley and Sheila Lees feel heartbreak from her loss and the way she died.

The room is how she left it, with a cherished doll on her bed and posters of her favourite movie, Frozen.

"We know nothing brings her back. But we also know that she can be the person to create change," said Sheila Lees. 

The couple did not realize how ill their daughter was when she told them she wasn't feeling well and needed to go to the emergency room at the nearby Aberdeen Regional Hospital in August 2023.

Unbeknownst to them, Shavonne, who had physical and mental disabilities, had contracted sepsis, a life-threatening condition caused by the body's overreaction to infection. 

She died the next day, and now — more than a year later — her parents say they're still trying to understand what went wrong and what needs to change to prevent similar tragedies. 

Lees said they arrived at the hospital in New Glasgow at 4:30 a.m. and her daughter spent nearly 16 hours in the emergency room. Shavonne lay on a stretcher in a room across from the nurses' station and was hooked up to a cardiac monitor, Lees said, who added that it didn't seem like her daughter's illness could be fatal.

"We trusted the medical professionals. Nobody was coming in and out of the room telling us anything," she said in a recent interview.

Shavonne was finally moved to intensive care but died there on Aug. 28, 2023.

Since then, Lees has spent hours combing through her daughter's medical charts to try to understand what happened, and has grown even more frustrated after identifying what she sees as gaps in care and miscommunications among staff.

"We watched our daughter die. And we didn't know that sepsis was taking over her body," Lees said. 

The family is also raising serious concerns about how Shavonne was treated. They believe she suffered discrimination as a person with a mental disability.

"The rare occasion where staff came in the room, they wouldn't even speak to Shavonne," said her 25-year-old brother, Austin, who was also by her side. "Not even something as simple as a 'Hi, how are you doing?'"

Questions appeared to be directed at other family members, but she would have been able to speak for herself, he said.