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Monday, September 2, 2013

Pneumonia

Wednesday, April 24, 2013


Diana Ford: How my father died.

"How our death can be planned and inflicted upon us when we don't want to die."
My father died July 11th, 2012, after fighting to live for 20 months,  He had no terminal illness. He was not comatose or vegetative.
My father died of an infection in the lungs that no one ever took the trouble to treat him for in an appropriate fashion and that was maintained by the medical staff in his lungs for the past 20 months.
He had been in the Ottawa Hospital from November 2010 to July 4th, 2012, when I finally got the approval to move him to the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal.
He died in the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal while I was talking to his doctors about what to do to help his pneumonia that had not been treated in the Ottawa Hospital for 2 months prior to the transfer.
After having inflicted pain and irreversible damage repeatedly, in order to cover for their wrong doings, the doctors at the Ottawa Hospital decided it was time for him to die.
They made an application to the Consent and Capacity Board of Ontario to have all medical treatment withdrawn from my father and in case he got worse, to pull out his feeding tube and let him starve to death.
The Province of Ontario, via the Consent and Capacity Board it created, approved their application to have my father's life terminated. In order to get this accomplished, the doctors at the Ottawa Hospital used lies and false claims. Meanwhile, even before any approval from the Board and without my knowledge or consent, the doctors had stopped all testing and all treatment for my father at the beginning of May, despite the fact that all tests from May 7th, 2012 indicated that he had acute pneumonia and desperately needed treatment. They had also denied my requests to have him transferred on three prior occasions and instead of helping to discharge him, they placed a security guard at his bedside to ensure that he does not get moved out of the Hospital.
In the autopsy result it is shown that my father was not vegetative and that his condition and death was due to asphyxiation because he was left with an untreated pneumonia for too long. Heavy death of neurons new and old indicate that he suffered from lack of oxygen in the past, when he was left unsuctioned, and recently, when he died because of his compromised respiratory system due to the old untreated pneumonia. Because he was moved out of the Ottawa Hospital one week prior to his death and into the Montreal Jewish General  the doctor in the Montreal Hospital tested and treated him. After the cultures were ready (it takes four days or so for cultures to develop), it was shown that he had "ample growth of E-Coli bacteria in his lungs" just as he did all along during the 19.5 months in the Ottawa Hospital, where he was only minimally treated until they stopped treating him entirely for two months before he died, fact that was hidden in the hope that perhaps so he would die "on his own". However, after the cultures were ready, the doctor in Montreal did treat my father for the 2.5 days before his death. Unfortunately it was too late for my father to gain the necessary strength to survive. However, it is very meaningful. because when the results came back from the autopsy report, it was shown that the 2.5 days of treatment he received at the Montreal Jewish General Hospital with a strong broad spectrum antibiotic was enough to clear his lungs entirely and that the theory of being unable to treat his pneumonia in 19.5 months at the Ottawa Hospital was indeed untrue. After only 2.5 days there was no more infection or just a negligible amount of bacterial growth in his lungs. Hence, had he been treated from the start, he would have been healed and out of the Hospital in two months instead of being tortured and dead after 19.5 months. The plan to let him die so it would save money backfired and instead of costing the system 2 months of Hospital stay, it ended up costing the system 19.5 months of Hospital stay and his life!
My father was the most generous, kindest, most giving and most altruistic human being I have ever known in my entire life.
He never did, nor would have hurt anyone but instead, he helped many people, practically, he helped anyone he could!
My father did and would have done anything to live longer in order to be with me and my mother even for just one more month!
Truth is he could have easily lived longer because, aside for a treatable pneumonia (if he had been given the proper antibiotics on time), there was nothing life threatening or seriously wrong with him.
His life was stolen from him. His life was denied to him. It was unfairly and callously terminated against his will.
He was killed by the Canadian Health Care System despite his struggle of 20 months and his wishes to live as long as possible.
His healers turned to killers at the Ottawa Hospital to cover for their incompetence and damages caused to my dad.

My father never enjoyed the "right to life, freedom and security" as promised to us by our Constitution.
Living was always a fight, a struggle, something that people wanted to take away from him.
His life was threatened many times until it was finally and permanently taken away from him by the men in white coats from the Canadian Hospitals.
When he was still a small child, his family fled Austria to save his life. Not long after that, Romania signed allegiance with the Nazis and his life was once again at risk.
I found out from books, written and published by people whose names he did not even know or remember, that my father, while in forced labor camps, had organized several barracks of younger people to attend to additional forced labor shifts, additional to the required times, in order to replace the barracks of older people on their shifts of forced labor so as to save those older people's lives. My father did not think that the elderly or the frail were disposable material, the way the doctors here think. He believed that every life is worth saving and that every human being came with mothers and fathers, children, wives and loved ones who would be crushed if this person was hurt or if they died. My father was a true human being: he was thoughtful and respectful of others. He did not live only for himself and think only of himself. He thought of all and fought for all around him to be protected and safe. He even put his own life at risk to protect other people's lives, people who were older, sicker and more frail than him and he never told anyone about this until the book was published and his actions were applauded by total strangers who were there at the time, remembering and grateful to him.
This is something that some of the doctors here, in our beautiful, democratic Canada, appear not to believe in. Far too often our Health Care professionals treat people like disposable goods that need to be thrown out when damaged or old. The doctrine of "if you can't heal them, kill them" is applied far too often along with a less obvious doctrine of "if healing them costs too much or takes too long, better kill them".
The way they do it is they withdraw treatment until their patients die "of natural causes". For example, like in my father's case, they will not treat pneumonias until the pneumonias get so strong that the patients die asphixiated and then they turn around and call it a "natural cause". After that, they go and tell the family "he went peacefully", meaning that dying suffocated was  right, without pain, easy and a natural death that the patient deserved. These doctors have no shame in killing their patients when the patients have the audacity of being inconveniently ill for longer than what is financially acceptable. I would have paid these murderers anything to let my father live, only they parade around pretending they are saintlier than saints and claim it's not about money. Meanwhile, they cost me $50,000 in legal and ambulance fees anyway or my dad would have been killed long ago. Murder is a convenient tool that covers their incompetence, negligence and all the damages they inflict upon their patients. Letting the patient die is the weapon of choice.
My father's assassins had the audacity and the arrogance to pretend that they had my father's interest at heart more than I did, that they knew him better than I did, that they knew better what he wished, what was in his best interest and what was of benefit to him. They argued that they saved him from suffering when they killed him. I think that this argument could be made for every living being on Earth because everyone suffers in one way or another.
The doctors argued that my father's dignity needed to be saved and that's why it was good for him to die. Clearly, this is an argument that could be brought in favor of killing every person who is unable to walk or move on their own. Therefore, what they are advocating is the killing of all handicapped or mentally ill patients. In reality, my father was completely dignified and if there was ever dignity anywhere, my father would have been the symbol of it. They think being ill is undignified but do not see that murdering their own patients is the most undignified, the most perverse and the most despicable behaviour a doctor could ever have. By their logic, these doctors, who go around murdering patients in the name of preserving dignity, are the ones who should be put to death first, since they lack not only dignity itself, but the understanding of what dignity means. In fact, they would not know dignity if it walked up to them and shook hands with them. Completely inhuman and devoid of all human feelings, they walk around dressed in human skin, bringing nothing but agony and despair to their patients and their patients' families.
To all of you who have written and called me to offer me condoleances, to all of you who sincerely have compassion and feel the pain I feel, instead of feeling sorry for me or my dad, please do something useful for me, for him, for you and for all of us: oppose our murderous medical system and the courts who give approval to doctors to kill their own patients, thereby handing death sentences to innocent people. This is not what we have doctors for. This is not what we have medical health care insurance for. This is not what we pay taxes for. This is not what we subsidise the doctors' university studies for. I do not mourn my father because my heart and my soul died the day he got assassinated by his doctors. Therefore, I cannot feel anything but outrage. My heart is dead, my feelings are numb, my humanity is at risk but my mind and my logic are very much alive. It is from my reasoning that this outrage is born, not from my feelings or from my emotions! I am a very rational and logical person when I tell you that this cannot and should not be allowed to go on!
Out of our responsibility as human beings, out of our civic duty, out of our love for our children or grandchildren, out of our concern for the well being of the futurte generations, we must fight this murderous system of disposing of "life unworthy of life", by not treating the handicapped, the mentally ill, the elderly or the "useless babies". Our emergency rooms should never turn the ill away. Our acute care or critical care units should always accept all acutely or critically ill patients instead of letting them die outside these units, our doctors should not unilaterally decide to withdraw treatment from the sick, they should not be the ones to decide who should live and who should die, they should provide care to all their patients equally, preserve and prolong life but never deliberately end it. Our courts should not give approval to the doctors to terminate the life of their patients. Our health insurance is what we all paid into and it must not be denied to us when we need it most! The fact that it is widely practiced is no excuse, on the contrary, it is an evil that has to be annihilated. This evil spreads like a mushroom, like a cancer and that's why it must be opposed, faught and eradicated. We have to change this. The thinking behind it, the inertia to do something about this problem and the complacency we have living with a murderous system, hoping that if we say and do nothing, it will never affect us, must be stopped.Those who think that living longer is a threat and not a blessing, those who think that Health Care is a privilege, not an insurance that must pay up when claimed, like any other insurance, those who think that the elderly should not be covered by health insurance, do not belong in a democratic country and should give up their own benefits first before they go to ask that other people's benefits be curtailed. I do not want to live in a state that approves medical professionals to add killing to their professional responsibilities. I do not want my doctors to have approval to murder, approval that comes from Courts and Boards created by the state to eliminate the weak. I do not want social Darwinism in my country.
My children and I will never forget or forgive what happened to my father and to us, here, in Canada at the hand of those who were supposed to help. We are marked. Our hearts and souls are mutilated. It happened to many before us and it will happen to many more if we don't do something to stop it. It is not because my father died that we feel so dead inside but because he should not have died murdered at the hands of those who should have helped him, who were there to save his life, his own doctors!
Those of you who have compassion and feel the pain I feel, instead of feeling sorry for me or for my dad, please sign this Petition to oppose our system where our Courts and State created Boards give approval to doctors to unilaterally decide to “let their own patients die”, in contradiction to the patient’s wishes or to the family members’ decisions. In doing so, this system has become a system of handing out death sentences to innocent people. This is not what we have doctors for! This is not what we have medical health care insurance for! This is not what we pay taxes for! This is not what we subsidise the doctors' university studies for!
I am attaching a Petition that I would appreciate if you could print, sign and scan back to email to me at: df1333@hotmail.com. Out of respect and/or love for my father or for me, please sign this Petition and help change a system that, if not changed, will some day, most likely, kill you or one of your loved ones too. Please distribute this petition to anyone you can think of that might sign it. Please follow me on twitter at Diana Ford@Snowsplendour

On line Petition:  Stop the involuntary euthanizing of patients in Canadian hospitals

CLICK ON THE LINKS BELOW TO READ MORE
Thank you so much,
Diana Ford

Thursday, August 8, 2013

An account of why we should get rid of advanced directives

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/magazine/a-life-or-death-situation.html?pagewanted=all&_rgf=0

This report was published in the New York Times magazine.  It was about Margaret Pabst Battin an academic who has made a very comfortable living by propagandizing pro-choice until she was faced with it with her husband. The future is always unknown.

Maggie has been characterized by the pro-life movement as being a dangerous woman.

Because of Maggie's being acclaimed an expert witness, advance directives and DNRs should be made illegal. No one can foresee the future.Thank you Maggie for making your expert witnessing a lie.

Up to two years ago I did not know what an advanced directive was nor did I understand the DNR.  I though a DNR was only used in advanced causes of terminal illness.  When/why did all this change..  I was of the belief that an advance directive was a directive to your family as to funeral arrangements.  I did not know that it is a directive on how you want to die.  Forgive me for thinking otherwise.

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Friday, August 2, 2013

Confidentiality has gone too far...

I recently phoned Vancouver General Hospital for information on a patient who I was visiting nearly everyday and to whom I was a substitution decision maker..  I was told that she was discharged from ICU.  I asked where to.  I was told such information was confidential.  I asked who made the information confidential, did the patient.  Since this patient could not speak or write because of her illness how could she have asked for such information to be confidential. The hospital did not ask if she wanted this privacy. It just takes it upon itself to impose this restriction.

I received a telephone call saying that Carolanne was at George Pearson Centre.  I contracted the social worker there and he would not confirm if she was there or not as such information was confidential.

Today being Sunday I was told that Carolanne was back at VGH.  I phoned VGH and was told she was now in tower 12C.  I went and saw her and although she was in bad shape she did recognize me.. Apparently within the few short days she was at GPC she gained an infection and she was rushed back to emergency and then to 12C.





Thursday, August 1, 2013

Trach patients

I was just told that trach patients are the second most expensive patients for health care cost.  The most expensive are those who have transplants.  Interesting comment.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

This must be true for Canada as well.

The Walmart family is the wealthiest family in this country, worth about $100 billion. owning more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of the American people, and yet here's the incredible fact.
Because their wages and benefits are so low, they are the major welfare recipients in America, because many, many of their workers depend on Medicaid, depend on food stamps, depend on government subsidies for housing. So, if the minimum wage went up for Walmart, would be a real cut in their profits, but it would be a real savings by the way for taxpayers, who would not having to subsidize Walmart employees because of their low wages.
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Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Brain Dead!!!!!

An organ cannot be harvested unless the donor is still alive.  Think about it.  It is after the harvesting that the patient truly dies. A transplant must come from a living person as after death all organs are dead and useless.

Patient Wakes Up as Doctors About to Remove Organs for Transplant

by Steven Ertelt | Syracuse, NY | LifeNews.com | 7/9/13 11:34 AM

As some nations move towards presumed consent on organ donations, there are more frequent occupancies of patients who are waking up from presumed death just as doctors are ready to harvest their organs for transplant.
Our of New York state comes this story of a patient who woke up just in time. From ABC News:
It was exactly midnight when Caroline Burns eerily opened her eyes and looked at the operating lights above her, shocking doctors who believed she was dead and were about to remove her organs and donate them to patients on the transplant waiting list.
The Syracuse Post-Standard unearthed a report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that chronicled the series of errors that led to the near-organ removal on a living patient at St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center in Syracuse, N.Y., in 2009.
“The patient did not suffer a cardiopulmonary arrest (as documented) and did not have irreversible brain damage,” the HHS report concluded. “The patient did not meet criteria for withdrawal of care.”
According to the report, doctors had inaccurately diagnosed Burns with irreversible brain damage and ignored nurses who’d noticed signs that Burns was improving: She curled her toes when touched, flared her nostrils and moved her mouth and tongue. She was also breathing on her own even though she was on a respirator.
Burns, who was 41 at the time, was initially found unresponsive and surrounded by empty bottles of Xanax, Benadryl, a muscle relaxant and an anti-inflammatory drug on Oct.16, 2009, according to the report. She was hypothermic and had a weak pulse, but she was alive.
In the St. Josephs emergency room, doctors performed toxicology tests and determined Burns was suffering from a multidrug overdose, according to the report. She was unresponsive and put on a ventilator.
The family made the decision to take Burns off life support and donate her organs the next day.
Although Burns opened her eyes at the last minute, saving herself from the organ harvest procedure, she committed suicide in 2011. The family never sued, and family members told the Syracuse Post-Standard that Burns was too depressed to be upset about what happened to her at St. Joseph’s.
But this isn’t the first time this has happened.
In what is becoming a more common theme, doctors rushed too fast to attempt to take the organs of a British man who was thought to be “brain dead” but recovered — thanks in part to the dedication of his family.
The case reminds of one that received attention in December in which a 20-year-old man awoke from a coma just hours before doctors were ready to shut off life support and take his organs for donation purposes.
Sam Schmid, an Arizona college student who was thought to be brain dead, recovered from injuries sustained in an automobile accident in October just hours before he was slated to be killed and his organs given to other patients.
The accident took the life of his best friend and college roommate and Schmid’s injuries were thought to be so grievous that a local hospital could not treat him and he was sent to Barrow Neurological Institute at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Phoenix to receive surgery for a life-threatening aneurysm.
As hospital officials began palliative care and talked with his parents about organ donation, Schmid began to hold up two fingers on command and started walking with the aid of a walker. Now, his speech has improved and doctors say he will have a complete recovery.
The case provides yet another example of what pro-life bioethicists like Wesley J. Smith have warned about misjudging patients as too far gone too soon and relegating them to organ donor status:
For years, organ transplant ethicists and some in the bioethics community have agitated to change the definition of death from a purely biological determination, to one based in utilitarianism and desired sociological narratives. Why mess with death? Too few organs are donated for transplant, leading to long waiting lines and the deaths of some people who might be saved were organs more readily available.
CLICK LIKE IF YOU’RE PRO-LIFE!

But why redefine death? The point of this reckless advocacy — although they don’t put it this bluntly — is that there are thousands of perfectly good organs being used by people who really don’t need them anymore, by which they mean patients with profound cognitive impairments who will remain unconscious or minimally aware for the rest of their lives. Why not harvest such patients, this thinking goes, for the benefit of people who could return to normal lives?
The problem is that would break the “dead donor rule,” the legal and moral pact organ transplant medicine made with society promising that vital organs would only be harvested from patients who are truly dead. Hence, if the definition of death were loosened to include, say, a diagnosis of persistent vegetative state, more organs could be obtained — and the dead donor rule could still appear to be honored, deemed essential for transplant medicine to retain the trust of society.
Of course, that would be fiction, and the redefinition actually a betrayal. What these “ethicists” really propose is killing for organs, a view now being promoted in some of the world’s most prestigious medical, science, and bioethical journals. For example, Nature recently editorialized in favor of liberalizing the rules governing brain death.
Currently, brain death requires the irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain and each of its constituent parts. Nature’s editorial claimed — without proof — that doctors obey “the spirit but not the letter, of this law. And many are feeling uncomfortable about it.”

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

June 25 2013 VCH Board Meeting

I attended the Vancouver Coastal Health Board Meeting on Tuesday.  I really do not know what VCH is trying to do.  When I attended the first board meeting in 2010 all the board members were there and now only the chair, the chief executive officer Ostrow and the new Operations Manager.  It was as if there was a decision made to hide the Board members so that they could not ask questions from presenters or the public.    It seemed that the audience was packed only by employees of VCH.  Prior to the Board meeting they had a private networking meeting (public not invited) which included a few politicians one of which was the minister for seniors but I didn't see him in the audience. This minister told me before the 2013 election at the Oakridge Seniors Centre that there would be no more money for health care.

I spoke of two items. There was only one other person who had a question.  I had five but Kip ended the meeting twenty minutes early.

I related a discussion I had with the volunteer co-ordinator for VCH.  I asked her what was the number of  professional health care workers  who volunteered with VCH and she said volunteerism by health care professionals were  unheard of.  Those no longer working for VCH  especially those who are retired and have full pensions should be encouraged to engage to volunteer.  They are a human resource which is dearly needed. The least they could do is hang out at health care facilities to act as independent comfort advocates for patients and their families.




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