Hospital, care home systems failed paralyzed Winnipeg senior in final days, family says

Neglect at a Winnipeg care home and an overrun hospital emergency room marred the final days of a Winnipeg senior's life, his family says.

Gary Davlut, 76, who was paralyzed from the chest down during heart surgery in 2021, received questionable care at Poseidon Care Home before his death last Nov. 20, they say.

"Not one, but two systems … failed him," said a grandchild of Davlut, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to job security risks. 

Family members also said "unreasonable" wait times at the Grace Hospital — including an estimated 118-hour wait for a medicine bed — swayed them to pull him from the ER the day before he died.

Davlut was at the Grace on Saturday, Nov. 18, the same day a patient died there after a 33-hour ER wait. The Manitoba Nurses' Union said at the time the ER "was a zoo" that weekend.

That evening, two family members had found the paralyzed senior slumped over some pillows meant to prop him up in a chair next to his bed at Poseidon. 

His stepdaughter Denise Youell said Davlut kept saying, "I'm so weak. I'm so weak."

The call button was out of his reach and his family said they saw blood in his catheter bag. They asked staff to call an ambulance.

"Definitely that situation … was neglect," Youell said.

When they arrived at the Grace that night, Youell saw "wall-to-wall stretchers" filling the emergency room hallway.

"It was just gridlock," she said.

Davlut spent 20 hours on a stretcher before a doctor called her on the afternoon of Sunday, Nov. 19, she said. 

Both family members said the hospital told her it could be 118 hours until a medicine bed opened up — or they could send him back to Poseidon.

"I just thought it was unreasonable," Youell said.