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Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Comfort Care

The following by Irene Ogrizek.  June 26,2016 (ireneogrizek.com)

One of the worst things that ever happened to my family, happened in a Canadian hospital. My mom was deteriorating, but instead of being helped to survive, she got surreptitious “comfort care”—that euphemism for let’s help this person die. We weren’t aware because we were told a different story, one that led us to believe there was some hope.

It’s a story I expect would have been reversed once she passed away; we would solemnly be told, “We’re sorry, but she was going to die anyway.” I know this because after my mother survived, I spoke to numerous families who’d been told the same after a parent had died. It got me wondering. Had it been true each time?

After my mother left the hospital, badly maimed, I engaged in several bouts of letter-writing to various government agencies and institutions. I wanted an explanation for what had happened, but when not one responded, and my anger became unmanageable, I gave up. Given my mother’s age and the vagaries of Canadian law, no legal recourse was available for us either: the powerlessness we experienced was total.

Addedum:  In BC there is a You Tube video: How the health authority deals with the public.  It says (1) delay (2) deny (3) divide (family from patient) (3) discredit (5) demoralize.  This process is so common that every lawyer and doctor knows it and it works.  It has been six years now since Randy had his accident and he was hospitalized and it has taken its toll.  The health professionals know exactly what they are doing and are robotic in their execution of this directive.


Sunday, August 28, 2016

How horrific can hospitals be...;


https://ca.news.yahoo.com/family-devastated-hospital-reportedly-removes-194507086.html

The above summarizes an end-of-life case in California. We need more parents like Jonee Fonseca and Nathaniel Stinson who proved that their son was not brain dead by taking him out of the country and then returned to California thinking everything would be okay. Although there was evidence that their son had brain activity, the court decided to follow the new hospital's decision to withdraw treatment. The boy died immediately after the court order.  You would have though the judge would have said to the hospital not to withdraw treatment for at least 48 hours to prepare the parents.

This case sounds like one in which a father was moved from an Ottawa hospital to a Quebec hospital and the Quebec hospital agreed with the Ottawa hospital and it refused to treat the father and he died shortly thereafter.

Perhaps, what happens a new medical assessment was done as things can change medically by the minute, it was decided by the new hospital that the little boy was going to die anyways and so let him die now.  If he was futile then why not let him die a few days later.   Such a case drives home the message to other parents not to defy the doctors.  They are always right (not true) even though 30-40 percent of all death is in the USA are caused by medical errors.

If a hospital is intent on killing a patient they can do a form of slow euthanasia and no one would know.  They do not need futile theory.








Tuesday, August 23, 2016

How health care is changing in the US and also Canada.

When VCH put a DNR on Randy these arguments were given.

After a Brain Injury, Tabetha Was Admitted to Hospice. Then She Was Denied Food and Water

National   Bobby Schindler   Aug 19, 2016   |   10:35AM    Washington, DC
Advocates responding heroically to crisis trump accountant-physicians responding indifferently based on cost
I often wonder the extent the general public is aware of the significant changes that have occurred within the American healthcare system.
When my family established the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network in response to my sister Terri’s 2005 death, it was for the purpose of serving the medically vulnerable. We could not have anticipated the calls for help we would receive. But since that time, there has been a marked decline as far as families receiving medical treatment they are seeking for those for whom they are advocating.
I don’t think it would surprise anyone that the cause of this is precipitated by the desire on the part of hospitals, physicians, and insurance companies to decrease costs by keeping patients in the healthcare system for as short a time as possible, even if that means denying lifesaving or sustaining care.
Indeed, I could give dozens of accounts of families who have called us for help that would send chills down your spine, but consider a call we received just last month – the story of Tabetha Long. It’s an amazing story of perseverance and recovery, but also an alarming example of how far we’ve drifted from properly caring for our medically vulnerable.
Tabetha had a cardiac episode this past spring. As a result, she experienced an anoxic brain injury. Her doctors were optimistic with her initial test results. In fact, in the few weeks following her incident, she had varying degrees of responsiveness. Accordingly, she was considered to be a good candidate for rehabilitation when she began to answer questions and track objects.
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Incredibly, and what is still difficult to explain, her mother, who was making her medical treatment decisions, decided to admit Tabetha into hospice where, subsequently, she was denied access to food and water.
After Tabetha’s boyfriend began asking questions when he learned that she wasn’t being fed, he contacted the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network. We immediately put him in touch with an attorney, who acted quickly. After an emergency court hearing, Tabetha was appointed a guardian-ad-litem (to investigate her best interests), was removed from hospice, and her food and water were resumed after almost two weeks of being starved and dehydrated.
Tabetha is currently at a rehabilitation facility, and doing quite well, but her case is ongoing. Amazingly, Tabetha’s mother, who admitted her to the hospice facility and instructed her caregivers to stop her food and water, is fighting for guardianship.
Tabetha’s story validates a disturbing change that has manifested itself within our healthcare system that we all need to realize–a pernicious “quality of life” mentality is guiding many of the life and death decisions made by healthcare professionals.
Certainly, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) passed into law by Congress and President Obama in 2010, will increase the massive negative ramifications to the quality of individual healthcare, again, in an attempt to control costs, but there are many elements involved with what is happening in today’s healthcare, exposing our medically vulnerable to premature deaths.
These things don’t happen overnight and this has been many years in the making, but our laws, policies, and societal attitudes have all become part of a doctor’s arsenal.
Just some of what’s changed. As already mentioned, quality of life determinations; food and water via feeding tubes being reclassified as “medical treatment”; hurriedly made “brain death” diagnosis to get at a patient’s organs; and the often used “medically futile” or “medically ineffective” determination, which always results in a death sentence for the patient, are just a few of what’s empowered physicians, and the hospitals they work for, to be the patient’s final decision maker.
What these “quality of life” determinations often mean, in practice? If your quality of life is considered too below the standards of some cultural ideal, or some physician’s opinion of what he considers “a good life,” the healthcare system diagnoses you as better off dead, administering the proper “medicines” in order to realize that diagnosis and “heal” the patient by means of an early death. This is how perverse our sense of “healthcare” has become.
Historically, medically futile decisions meant that the physician did not believe it was likely that treatment of the medical condition would substantially benefit the patient. Today, however, medically futile decisions are made not that such treatments would not work, but rather that physicians believe that the burden (i.e. cost) exceeds the benefits. Physicians’ futility determinations are not based in definitive science, but on their own understanding of the term, which seems to be tied to cost containment objectives.
Nevertheless, if the family wanted to dispute one of these denial of treatment decisions that is made by a physician/hospital, typically this disagreement would proceed to the hospital’s ethical committee, authorized to be the mediator in such disputes. Unfortunately, the ethics committees are serving the best interest of the hospital, and in all of the situations the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network has experienced where ethics committees were involved, the patient almost always loses.
We need to look at the unimaginable that happened to Tabetha and the lesson of her case. What’s the lesson? It’s that we need heroic advocates in our lives. We need heroic family members, friends, or medical personnel who care about us, and are willing to commit to be on our side if the worst were to happen.
As important as things like “living wills” or Advance Directives can be, they are just as often lost or forgotten sometimes years later when a medical crisis strikes, and life-or-death decisions have to be made in minutes or seconds. Even if Tabetha had created a living will prior to her medical emergency, there’s no guarantee that the physicians and medical staff who ultimately treated her would be aware of it. It was thanks to the heroic efforts of Tabetha’s boyfriend that she is still alive and has the chance for a meaningful recovery.
No piece of paper can substitute for the tenacity of a committed advocate and friend. If you haven’t spoken to someone close to you about being there for you in a time of crisis, consider having that conversation today.
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Monday, August 22, 2016

It is happening all the time. We do not need Bill C-14.

From Facebook August 21 2016 author Diana Ford

This was what I posted one month after my father was put to death, four years ago, by his Hospital doctors here in Canada. He was "left to suffer and to die" against his wish, against our family's wishes, without any reason and, since he was not dying of any terminal illness, it was done against nature. My Petition seeking to oppose a system that allows for doctors to terminate the lives of their handicapped (physically or mentally) patients or of their elderly patients got a few hundred signatures, way too few to make any difference or to actually change legislation because of it. At about the same time, a dog was put to death by the authorities for being "dangerous" . It's owners circulated a petition and it got several hundred thousand signatures, closer to a million. I love animals also and of course I felt for them but that's not the point. This enormous discrepancy in numbers of of people who opposed the un-consented. involuntary euthanizing of human beings versus euthanizing animals is reflective on our society today and its values. It reflects on what is important to us and whose lives we want saved. We now have passed the new Euthanasia law here, in Canada, and those patients who will be "terminated" by their doctors without their knowledge and totally against their wishes, will be given as examples for how well our legalized "Euthanasia Program" benefits our citizens. The fact that the patients don't wish to die and that they aren't even informed that they are going to be euthanized before being put to death, will be conveniently left out of the narrative. In my father's case, when it was first picked up by the newspapers, it was both distorted and left out. What's coming will be a direct result of our behavior now, as a society, our low regard for "imperfect" human life and our condoning the illegal killings of patients in Hospitals. There's no room to claim ignorance as an excuse! Those who condone or even promote the terminating of the lives of patients in Hospitals, of people who do not want to die but are deemed by society as "hopeless cases" and labelled by the medical system as "too old" or "too ill" to be worthy of maintaining alive, think that this is a proper way to save money. What they don't know, but will undoubtedly find out, is that no one will ever lower their taxes because of this system of euthanizing the vulnerable instead of treating them and that the system will "terminate" their lives just as fast, when they become old or incapable, when they do not wish to die and when their own families will feel powerless and devastated. All the money they "saved" or, for that matter, all the money in the world won't help them then. When the government has a system in place to dispose of our lives and to take it from us against our will, via the medical establishment, the individual has lost the most fundamental right: the right to life. It's game over.
Diana Ford
August 21, 2012 ·
My father was murdered. He did not "die" because he had no reason to die and he did not want to die. When we bring our loved ones into Hospitals, we expect them to get treated, not executed. I realize now that everyone's parents can be murdered if they happen to be old and sick and end up in a Hospital here. Your Power of Attorney will not be respected if the doctor decides your parent is an "inconvenience", if he/she has been ill for longer than what the doctor deems "acceptable". They have an easy system to do away with anyone they decide, unless we get their system changed. The decision to live or die when we cannot communicate should be left with us or with our Power of Attorney and/or family members. Having the doctors or the jurists decide for us is undemocratic. Our control over our own lives is taken from us, If you do not do something about this, and soon, you allow strangers to make these decisions for you, for your parents, and most frightening of all, when you are no longer here, for your children. Is this what should happen here? Is this what you want? Please contact df1333@hotmail.com if you need more info or wish to sign a petition telling the government to back off and let us make our own decisions in this very private matter. Thank you

Sunday, August 7, 2016

More Power of Attorney duties

 According to Trevor Todd, lawyer, in BC one of  the duties and powers of an Attorney, is that the attorney must do among things the following (see: http:disinherited.com)


D.  Not dispose of property that the attorney knows is a specific testamentary gift of the adult's Will.

Since Allan is the executor of the Will and knows that my Aunt wants her property to go to her church society, Allan cannot sell it.  The only caveat to that is who is he accountable to.  No government agency is going to get involved nor I suspect anyone else.


 According to Trevor Todd, lawyer, in BC one of  the duties and powers of an Attorney, is that the attorney must do among things the following (see: http:disinherited.com)

D.  Not dispose of property that the attorney knows is a specific testamentary gift of the adult's Will.

Since Allan is the executor of the Will and knows that my Aunt wants her property to go to her church society, Allan cannot sell it.  The only problem is who is going to stop him. No government agency is going to get involved nor I suspect anyone else. He will say, I will never do it and then he will do it.  I still have not got his address in Chilliwack or his phone number. Objectively he is guilty of abuse; he is suppose to be in a position of trust and yet on two occasions he sent Helen to a facility convincing her that is where she belongs and tries to sell her home and that of her late husband's without telling her or anyone else.  Having everyone give him a letter of reference, only proves he is a manipulator.  The point is he is guilty of attempted premediated conversion of assets (theft) and the bigger crime of depriving her of her freedom of being in her home.

The Public Guardian and Trustee should based on the mischief of my cousin put a lien on the property so my Aunt's testamentary wish will happened.

Powers of Attorneys and Wills worked well a hundred years ago when families were close and knew everything about each other and no one would be dishonourable but not now in our generation of no-shame, self-interest, me entitlement, secrecy/confidentiality, who would know.  Allan does not have to explain what he does.  We have to trust him.

I just discovered correspondence that proves that my cousin was planning to put my aunt in a nursing home a year before he finally did it.  Of course he did not tell my aunt that he was arranging for her place of death. 

Sounds like doctors, we must trust them even though 30% of what they do could be better diagnosed.  Trust your lawyer when 50% of them do not understand the nuances of the law.  And if you are not happy with your lawyer because he did not do his job as he should have, you have to find another lawyer to sue the first lawyer.  Lots of luck. Same with doctors, lots of luck trying to find a second opinion or suing them.

For family unity, I want Allan to resign as my Aunt's power of attorney.  She does not need anyone to make her decisions for her.  If he does not resign then for sure he is guilty of something. But then who would know.

The reason why I am doing this on my blog is (1) my cousin should be tarred and feathered for what he has done and what will do and (2) to say how dangerous are powers of attorneys and how easy it is to abuse a trusting person specifically if you are a senior. And the collusion for all of those who are in a position to gain a paid service.


Friday, August 5, 2016

Is Health Care Canada's Largest Industry?

Is health care Canada's largest industry.  I would think so.  If it is true in the USA, it would be true in Canada.

From Time magazine January 19, 2015 by Steven Brill, page 38.

Health care is America's largest industry by far, employing a sixth of the country's workforce.  And it is an average Americans' largest single expense, whether paid out of their pockets or through taxes and insurance premiums.

So, not only do doctors control life and death, they also control the GNP.




Monday, August 1, 2016

Read what a trusted Executor of a Will can do: A private matter.

Halifax mayor removed as executor of Thibeault's estate
Halifax lawyer Bianca Krueger said Mayor Peter Kelly will not be fighting his removal as the executor of Mary Thibeault's estate.
The heirs of Thibeault have applied in June for the dismissal of Kelly, whom they alleged took more than $175,000 from the woman's assets.
It remains unclear whether that money was refunded.
By Oct. 1, Kelly has to file an affidavit at the Probate Court of Nova Scotia detailing his time as the estate executor.
He will also submit to the court the estate’s financial account from the time that Thibeault died in December of 2004 until he was discharged as executor.
Afterwards he will follow the standard practice of meeting with the registrar of the probate court by Jan. 15 to formally review his stint as executor as well as evaluate the estate’s account.
Heirs want to get rid of Halifax mayor as estate executor
At least five of the heirs of Mary Thibeault have asked the probate court of Nova Scotia to have Halifax Mayor Peter Kelly removed as the executor of their aunt's estate.
This amid allegations that Kelly has taken $175,000 and more from Thibeault's will.
It has also been seven years since Thibeault died but the Halifax mayor has not yet settled the estate.
The move of the five heirs is supported by two others whose names are also included in the estate. Both said Kelly's delay in settling the estate and other actions which are questionable have left them with no choice.
The heirs' lawyer Lloyd Robbins of Halifax had written to Kelly's lawyer in March 2011, tracing the path of the supposedly missing funds.
Thibeault died Dec. 7, 2004. Although some of her heirs have received $25,000, at least two died waiting for the accounts to be settled.
According to a lawyer for Kelly, if the beneficiaries agreed to be silent about the incident, the mayor would be willing to refund the amount taken.
Halifax mayor facing questions over estate
Halifax mayor Peter Kelly is being surrounded by questions pertaining to his role as the executor of the will of Mary Thibeault, whom he knew since childhood.
The controversy is building over allegations of missing money and long delay in settling Thibeault’s estate. Thibeault died in December 2004.
Kelly has so far been directing all queries to his Halifax lawyer Harry Thompson, who is currently on vacation, saying the matter is a private one.

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