Ottawa April 15, 2013
A PRACTICAL ILLUSTRATION OF HOW
HARMFUL DISCRIMINATION BASED ON AGE AND HANDICAP IS AND WHY WE
ARE ALL AT RISK OF ENDING UP DEAD SOME DAY BECAUSE OF IT
(this is the
exact step by step procedure that was followed by the Ottawa Hospital doctors in order to
obtain a wrongful decision from the Ontario Consent and Capacity
Board to “let my father die”)
The following shows how our death can be planned and
inflicted upon us when we don’t want to die:
1. An older person gets in a Hospital fairly ill or after a
serious accident. Triage is done: based strictly on age and
injury, the case is classified as difficult, therefore, the
patient is assessed to go into palliative care. The idea is not
to spend too much time, resources and effort on this patient.
For this, the approval of the patient or his power of attorney
is required. However, in this case, the patient wants very much
to live and has every reason to live (with a lot of love and
purpose in his life) but has no reason to want to die. In the
hope of improving and returning to his family that he misses and
adores, the patient requests level one care and expects to
receive adequate care. The Hospital infects him with E-Coli and
Klebsiella in the lungs while he is immobile in bed and the
decision is made to minimize care to this patient. The family is
called in by the doctor who tries once again to influence the
family to let go of the patient. The doctor says that given the
seriousness of the illness or injury, the chances for recovery
are slim (even though the chances of recovery are not known to
the doctor at this time because no medical treatment was tried
out yet) and the family is asked to sign a DNR (do not
resuscitate) form. Although the family is not explained the
significance of such a document, at this point the family still
hopes in a gradual (maybe only partial) recovery if proper care
is administered, and does not want to sign the DNR form. Age is
invoked as a
justification to withhold treatment and take the patient off
level one care. If the patient is not an elderly, the
justifications made by the doctor would be that in this
particular state, the injury or the illness is too serious. The
methods customarily employed to get the family to sign a DNR
are: 1. To convince the family that the patient will never get
better and that DNR is the compassionate thing to do, 2. When
the family cannot be convinced that the patient will not get
better, the doctor will ask emphatically the question “who would
want to live in this condition?”, even though he does not really
know what the condition of the patient would become in the
future but insinuating that the patient’s final condition will
be very bad. In a way, this is a self fulfilling prophecy. In
every conversation the implication made by the doctor is that
the patient is better off dead than alive. Meanwhile, the family
wonders: “OK, so perhaps the patient cannot recover fully, but a
doctor must fulfill his professional responsibility of at least
trying to improve the medical condition of the patient who is in
obvious need of medical treatment, no?”
2. The doctor provides minimal treatment, only enough to be able
to claim he tried to treat this patient. Meanwhile, important
but inconspicuous details of the treatment required to maintain
the patient at the same level of health or to improve upon it,
are left out, like: not putting on socks against thrombosis or
administering blood tinners to prevent clotting, so the patient
develops DVT; not giving blood thinning medication when the
Blood Pressure is too high, so as to prevent strokes; not
prescribing pain medication which, if left unattended to, will
cause either dangerous oxygen drops or increase heart rate that
may develop into tachycardia, or both. Then, the blood clots can
travel and the patient either gets an aneurism or a pulmonary
embolism and dies or he suffers a stroke or a heart attack. If
it’s a stroke, it's easy: the patient gets to be declared
vegetative and the doctors can ask the courts/boards to have the
patient “let to die”. If it's a heart attack, it's only a matter
of time. If the patient’s oxygen drops severely and/or
frequently, he will get a tracheotomy. This may prevent the
patient from talking if the vocal chords get damaged in the
process. If left in for a longer period of time and if the
patient is not monitored, the tracheotomy can cause congestive
heart failure or become a source of infection. As well, a
tracheotomy produces secretions along the trachea tube which can
thicken up and form small plugs that will suffocate the patient
if he is not suctioned promptly. If this happens in the absence
of any witnesses, the doctor can say that the patient died from
the effusion or consolidation or the arrhythmia or from a
respiratory complication and no one will ever know or find out
that the patient was simply not attended to because it was
planned for him to receive minimal attention and minimal care.
Lack of regular and
frequent suctioning of the trachea tube puts additional stress
on the heart, which is beating too fast because of the unmanaged
pain. The family come to visit every day and watch to ensure the
patient gets suctioned so he does not die. Meanwhile, simply not
taking regular blood tests will get the electrolytes out of
balance, so that the arrhythmia of the heart turns into
tachycardia, or bradycardia, or both. If the patient is not
maintained on a cardiac monitor, the patient may die rapidly
from fibrillation.
3. Heart problems often turn into lung problems and vice versa.
If the patient hasn’t died yet, if his heart hasn’t stopped
functioning yet, then the lungs will fail. When the heart is
irregular, and especially when the patient who has a tracheotomy
is not frequently suctioned, water consolidates in the lungs.
This is a condition that is foreseeable, preventable and
treatable except for if there is no desire to attend to the
patient. When
ignored, it gets blamed on the patient’s immobility (since it
occurs often in immobile patients). Due to the lack of pain
management and the build-up of un-suctioned secretions around
the trachea tube, the heart will speed up and the patient will
get tachycardia and suffer from sporadic oxygen drops that are
not detected because he was taken off the heart and oxygen
monitor in such way as to have no alarms or any other way of
knowing when these occurrences take place. The lack of oxygen
will kill neurons in the patient’s brain, thereby diminishing
his cognitive functions progressively more and more. Lack of
knowledge when a patient with a tracheotomy requires suctioning
sets his life at risk, kills his brain cells and guarantees that
eventually his lungs will fail. Without regular X-rays, without
the proper diuretics to eliminate the fluid gathered in the
lungs and without proper heart medication, the consolidation in
the lungs increases and makes it difficult for the patient to
breathe, placing the patient at risk of aspiration pneumonia. As
well, this situation creates the ideal setting for congestive
heart failure. Of course, it could have all been avoided had the
medical care been provided in an adequate and responsible
manner. If the liquid intake is adjusted properly, if diuretics
and/or other medications are prescribed on time, if the
patient’s pain management and electrolyte management are
adequate, if the patient was monitored for heart and oxygen
saturation to know when medical intervention or suctioning are
necessary none of the patients complications would have
occurred. But if in the doctor's opinion this particular
patient’s life is not worth saving, all resources spent on his
care are viewed as a waste and the patient is left to
deteriorate progressively in order to die. The direct result of
such neglect is pneumonia. Usually, an unwanted patient will be
left to die of pneumonia.
4. The Hospital doctor will talk with the patient's family again
in order to obtain a DNR. The doctor will insist that the
patient is too ill to be cured. This is not based on any medical
finding but simply on a decision made by the medical team to let
this particular patient die. He says that the patient has
developed complications (compliments of the Hospital induced
infections and lack of medical care) and nothing further can be
done. He tells the family that the lack of mobility caused the
patient’s lungs to fail, and keeps blaming a pre-existent heart
condition for the patient’s present heart problems (regardless
of the fact that his heart functioned perfectly for many years
before arriving in the Hospital and even after his arrival in
the Hospital! But the doctor leaves that out, of course.). As
well, the fact that the patient was allowed to aspire because of
the lack of suctioning, from the accumulation of water and
secretions in his lungs, is completely hidden from the family.
The family maintains the hope that with good medical care the
patient might still improve and pleads with the doctor for more
attention and better treatment. The doctor knows that the oxygen
depletion to the brain will cause brain cell death and
consequently cognitive impairment. Therefore, if the family
continues to decline the doctor’s request to DNR the patient,
this depletion of oxygen causing decreased cognition gives the
doctor the option to bring this case in front of the CCB
(Consent and Capacity Board) to claim that the patient is
vegetative and obtain permission to let him die (in case he does
not die on his own by then!) by refusing the patient any medical
treatment and then, “in case” the patient’s condition gets
worse, by actually terminating the patient’s life through
disconnection of the feeding tube (or, in other cases the
ventilator). The patient is also left anemic for almost the
entire duration of his stay in the Hospital. This too causes the
heart to beat irregularly, faster and faster, get tachycardia as
well as kidneys failure. If the patient survives it will be
brought in front of the CCB as one more “cogent and compelling”
argument why it’s in the patient’s best interest to be left to
die.
5. If the patient doesn’t die from the oxygen depletion, from
the irregular heart beat and tachycardia, from the congestive
heart failure, the thrombosis, the aspiration pneumonia, from
the infections in his lungs or from the infected catheter in his
bladder, he will be left to get yet another infection, usually
through the mouth or through the bladder since these are the two
places were tubes penetrate into the patient’s body and can
easily get infected. He gets both. He gets UTI through the
catheter and bacterial pneumonia through the trachea, which can
also cause death. At first, his pneumonia is treated with many
insufficient runs of antibiotics that will render the patient
immune to the antibiotics but that will not destroy the bacteria
completely. This method of treatment could kill the patient and
at the same time maintain a cover of an honorable appearance of
attempt to medically treat the patient. No testing is conducted
at the end of any run of antibiotics so as to not know if any
infected bacteria are still present.
6. Since all this was still unable to end my father’s life
because he was too determine to live, he was left infected with
pneumonia without any treatment until he developed septicemia on
several occasions when, for the sake of maintaining an
appearance of legality and proper care, he was rushed back into
ICU where they would apply emergency treatment and barely save
his life. These septic episodes caused him drops in oxygen and
tachycardia to the point where he had strokes and heart attacks.
Given the recurrence of the bacterial pneumonia because of
ineffective and inappropriate treatments the patient either dies
or is declared colonized with the recurring bacteria (which is
synonymous with total withdrawal of treatment for pneumonia).
The reason invoked is that once colonized, any treatment becomes
futile. In reality, this is untrue and many doctors treat it.
When colonized, a patient usually needs more aggressive
treatment but it is not a hopeless situation. However, doctors
can do anything they want and they wanted to sit back and wait
for the unavoidable. Therefore, after not being treated for his
infection in May of 2013, my father was no longer rushed into
the ICU. Instead, his condition and lack of treatment were
painstakingly hidden from the patient’s attorney and the
patient’s family.
7. The medical staff has become impatient. A lot of time has
passed since they predicted the patient’s end of life and their
predictions now look very farfetched. A lot of time had passed
since the doctor told the family that the patient will die soon
and asked to have the patient DNRd. The doctor has lost all
credibility. 16 months longer than the doctors had intended to
devote to this patient! And unbelievably enough, the patient is
still fighting for his life. To everyone's total surprise, this
patient is not dead yet. New methods must be found to get rid of
this stubborn patient and his nagging family. The patient gets
declared infected and put in an isolation room with patients who
have contagious diseases, the superbugs: MRSA, VRE, C-Dif, and
infectious diseases such as Hepatitis and other transmissible
diseases despite the protests of the family and the fact that
the patient has insurance from his previous employer for a
private Hospital room. Meanwhile, the patient has no contagious
illness of any kind. The family gets told once again that there
is absolutely no hope and that it is unfair to the patient to be
kept alive. The family knows the patient wishes to live.
8. New methods are introduced. The family finds the patient
bruised and bleeding on his knees or lower legs when the patient
is immobile and non-verbal and could not have caused those
injuries to himself. The family is forced to witness the patient
being tortured by not suctioning him when his secretions are
choking him and he gasps for air. The family protests when the
patient's hands are tied so as to not scratch himself when due
to the lack of hygiene, a rash developed on his skin that itches
him very hard. The family witnesses nurses walking away when the
patient is soiled and saying that there is no need to clean the
patient because if they would clean him, he would only dirty
himself again. The family is disallowed to give any help or
relief to the patient when he chokes and no one is there or
responds to the alarms, to suction him. A security guard is
placed at the patient's bedside to watch that the family does
not suction the patient because he may not die then. First,
these pains are used to coerce the family into signing the
patient's release to a long term care facility with none or very
minimal medical care when the patient is acutely ill. Then, the
pain inflicted on the patient is used as leverage to force the
family to sign the DNR (do not resuscitate), which would assure
the patient dies. When the family disagrees, regardless of the
Living Will and the Power of Attorney signed by the patient in
favor of his trusted family member, stating clearly that this
family member is the only one entitled to give consent regarding
receiving changing or withdrawing treatment, the doctors decide
it's time to go legal to terminate this patient’s life. Testing
& treatments get stopped completely without notifying the family
or without approval of the Board.
9. After two months of untreated pneumonia, left with high fever
and in agonizing pain in his chest and head, the patient becomes
less responsive and less interactive. At this time, pain
management is delivered religiously via pain medication and
sedatives but all other testing, preventive or active treatments
are withdrawn without the patient’s family knowledge or consent.
The lack of treatment to the patient is kept secret in
classified documents that are refused to the patient or the
patient’s family. A security guard posted in the patient’s room
ensures that no information is given to the patient’s family by
any of the Hospital staff. While waiting for the Board Hearing,
the doctor had already changed the plan of treatment for the
patient without consent from the patient’s attorney. The doctor
is not a specialist in neurology but he testifies in the Board
Hearing that the patient is vegetative because in his opinion,
the patient “meets the clinical criteria of a persistent
vegetative state” because he had observed the patient for ten
minutes before the Board Hearing and the patient was unable to
interact in a meaningful way with his environment. The Consent
and Capacity Board does not question the doctor at all, why he
did not bring any evidence, why the diagnosis was reached
without any neurological testing, why the Patient’s Chart was
not brought to show what medication the patient is on, such as
the pain killers or sedatives, why no lab results or vitals were
presented to give an idea of the patient’s physical condition,
nor does the Board have an issue with the fact that a
neurological diagnosis was made by a generalist with no
background in this highly specialized field and that he reached
a diagnosis after only 10 minutes of observation when the
article from the medical journal he cited in the Hearing was
stipulating that it could only be reached after a lengthy period
of observation of several weeks.
10. The Board does not question the doctor at all but prevents
the patient’s attorney from entering into evidence any of the
documents she had prepared including the patient’s medical Chart
and interrupted and denied her the right to make her arguments
by cutting off half the day that was dedicated to this Hearing
and that was specifically the time allotted to the patient’s
attorney closing arguments. Even then she was prepared to rush
through but the doctor’s attorney took twice the time that she
said she would so there was no time left for the closing
arguments. The doctors asked the Board to have their power
substituted for the power of attorney given by the patient to
his family member that he trusted. Meanwhile, in the patient’s
Chart results from EEGs, MRI of the head, and CT scans taken at
various times throughout the patient’s Hospital stay, do not
support the theory of a persistent vegetative state as advanced
by the doctor although in the article he cited, it is specified
that the supporting scientific neurological tests should be used
with any clinical diagnosis. Since every one of the neurological
tests, some as recent as one month prior to the application made
by the doctor to the Board, are not supporting the clinical
diagnosis made by a doctor who is not a specialist in the field,
the diagnosis was wrong.
11. The Board dismissed every one of the testimonials from the
attorney or the family and ignored the fact that the independent
medical opinion requested by the Board was disallowed by the
Hospital doctor. A man who was not vegetative was now
effectively declared vegetative for the purpose of having his
life terminated. A death sentence was handed out on a false
pretense but still, it saves money: 0.1 penny per Ontario
citizen a year and 0.00005% of the Ontario deficit yearly (had
he been able to live for a year and had he been still in the
Hospital for that long). The doctor gets appreciation for
improving the efficiency of the Canadian Health Care system. The
newspapers write about this judicial breakthrough where
Hospitals are finally doing something right and where “no more
heroic measures” are taken in order to save the life unworthy of
living of a vegetative patient. The public cheers. The patient
dies. The family appeals immediately the wrong decision of the
Board but the Superior Court of Ontario grants the Hospital a
motion to moot the Appeal based on the fact that the patient is
dead. The patient is dead and justice is dead with him as are
all his rights that were crushed in the process.
12. In the autopsy result it is shown that the patient 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 untreated pneumonia. Also,
he was moved out of the Ottawa Hospital one week prior to his
death into the Montreal Jewish General. Here, they did treat and
test 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
minimally treated, just enough to remain infected but to give
the appearance that he was treated and then, when he was no
longer treated at all it was hidden so no one would find out in
the hope that perhaps so he would die "on his own". When the
results came back from the blood cultures, unlike in the Ottawa
Hospital, the Montreal Jewish General Hospital treated him
immediately with the strongest broad spectrum antibiotic
available and three days later when the autopsy was carried out,
the results show that his lungs were cleared and that he had no
more infected pneumonia and no bacterial growth in his lungs.
Only very few remnants would show a trace of infection
indicating that he had suffered from pneumonia. 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.
CONCLUSION:
A man is wrongfully killed due to a wrong decision of a Board
that has no tests for elimination of false testimony presented
by a medical professionalwho is not specialized in the field he
is testifying in.
A Board fails to apply due diligence to find out why no medical
test results are presented in the Hearing, why the patient was
diagnosed vegetative only 10 minutes before the Hearing. The
Board did not care to find out that while this patient was
diagnosed clinically vegetative he was sedated and left
untreated while infected with pneumonia until he got septic. The
Board did not request to see any medical documentation regarding
the patient’s actual physical condition or the medication he was
given that might have caused him to become unresponsive and
makes the wrong decision to let him die. The Supreme Court of
Ontario finds that this case is moot because the patient died.
The patient is denied all his rights, his rights to life,
security and freedom. his rights to not be discriminated against
based on age or handicap, his rights to receive the health care,
insurance that he paid for with heavy tax dollars, denied his
rights to a second independent medical opinion, denied his
rights to leave a Hospital when he wants to do so, his rights to
access his medical records which are kept hidden from him, as
well as his rights to justice that are denied because he had the
poor inspiration to die when the Board allowed the doctors to
“just let him die”. The judge deemed it not necessary to spend
his and his family’s tax dollars to deliver justice to him or to
his family. It was deemed “not in public interest” because
presumably he was not a citizen whose life was of a value equal
to that of any criminal that gets stabbed to death in the
process of committing a crime so this patient did not deserve
justice. His life was of no value to the public and preserving
it was of no value to the public therefore, the judge decided
that it was not in the public interest to pursue this matter
because he had already died. A man’s deliberate life removal was
irrelevant to our justice system.
NOTE: when the medical establishment and the judicial
establishment join hands for the purpose of imposing their will
to terminate a human life on the person to whom that life
belongs, a person who is often weaker and completely
defenseless, such as the elderly and the handicapped, we end up
with a society that has the values and behaviors of the Third
Reich. The T4 program started with a legal entity equivalent to
the Ontario Consent and Capacity Board, authorizing doctors to
destroy their mentally ill patients in order to legitimize
murder of patients by their doctors in the name of public
interest. It was all done in a covert manner, with the
appearance of propriety, with the authority of legal, medical
and scientific professionals and under the compelling banner of
compassion for the patient in whose interest they were acting.
The scale was different but the similarities are staggering.
I am attaching a
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
dford1@rogers.com
125,287
For
several months, I’ve been polishing the story of my recovery from the
accident that brought me into the world of disability. Until recently, I
hadn’t talked much about this period of my life. The memories can
still make me angry. The anger isn’t about my disability, though. The
anger is about the doctors that didn’t think I would have a life worth
living – and how hard my family had to fight to make sure I received the
treatment I needed to survive.