WhatFinger


Canadian healthcare system

Almost euthanasia



Next time you feel like bragging about how great the Canadian healthcare system is you may want to consider what’s routinely done to elderly patients in some of our hospitals. Recently an elderly woman, let’s call her Mary, had a stroke, which affected the left side of her body, meaning that the stroke occurred in the right lobe of her brain.

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Mary was admitted to hospital in a fairly timely fashion and was quickly diagnosed by competent medical staff, including a neurologist. After the diagnosis she was given an intravenous drip (IV) containing blood thinners and other medications designed to ameliorate the affects of the stroke. She also received a CAT scan, which established that the stroke had caused considerable damage to her brain. The hospital informed the family that there wasn’t much that could be done for Mary and to prepare for the inevitable, even suggesting the withdrawal of the IV. The family was devastated at the prospect of losing Mary and hesitated in following the hospital’s recommendation, reasoning that withholding medication and nourishment was contrary to their belief in the sanctity of life. Here’s where the story gets interesting. It took four days for the neurologist to contact the family regarding Mary’s prognosis, and when he finally did contact them he informed them that he had cancelled plans for Mary to have a speech therapist and physiotherapist. His view of Mary’s prognosis was that the situation was completely hopeless, as a second CAT scan had revealed even more severe damage to the right lobe of Mary’s brain than the first. “There’s nothing else to be done,” the doctor informed the crestfallen family members. Mary, however, had other plans. As she lay in her hospital bed for over three weeks, she slowly began to regain her ability to speak and actually managed to move parts of her left side, starting with the toes on her left foot. Throughout all this time Mary’s family and friends were at the side of her hospital bed caring for her and communicating their love to her. On numerous occasions Mary was able to speak to relatives in Germany in her native German and related the conversation to family members at the hospital in English. She also regained the ability to write—all on her own without help of a therapist. As her speech managed to improve, Mary began to express a desire to eat, as for the entire time that she had been hospitalized the hospital had failed to feed her. When questioned by Mary’s family as to why they hospital refused to give Mary food, the nurses explained that it was a liability issue, as stroke patients were never fed until they had passed a “swallowing test”. Only problem is the person qualified to administer the swallowing test is an itinerant tester that apparently moves from hospital to hospital, covering, it seems, a fairly wide range of territory. According to the hospital, during the three weeks that Mary had been hospitalized this tester had had only one occasion to visit the hospital to administer said swallowing test, but Mary was sleeping and was therefore not tested. It seems highly implausible that a community of over 20,000 people with an ultra-modern hospital wouldn’t have visits from a qualified professional tasked with testing stroke victims more frequently than once every three or four weeks. Much more plausible is the doctor’s view that Mary’s life isn’t worth saving, given the results of the CAT scan, regardless of Mary’s remarkable progress. What happened to Mary under the Canadian government healthcare monopoly is frightening, albeit not unusual, as many other people have related similar stories. What happened to Mary would under any other circumstances be described as an attempt at euthanasia. But here in Canada they call it healthcare.


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Klaus Rohrich -- Bio and Archives

Klaus Rohrich is senior columnist for Canada Free Press. Klaus also writes topical articles for numerous magazines. He has a regular column on RetirementHomes and is currently working on his first book dealing with the toxicity of liberalism.  His work has been featured on the Drudge Report, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, among others.  He lives and works in a small town outside of Toronto.

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