Calls from the CCC helpline: The System is broken
Compassionate Community Care has received a flurry of calls in recent weeks; striking stories of Canadians who have been offered MAID by their doctors and specialists, rather than offer to receive proper treatment or adequate medical or mental health care. This is an alarming trend we are seeing evidence of and demonstrates the widening holes in our health care system and lack of care for patients and their needs.
One caller, Anna* is on a 28-year Benzodiazepine prescription, since 1995. Although Benzo is not a pain medication, Anna was originally prescribed it for sleep. This medication is highly addictive and one of the hardest prescriptions to withdraw from even at a young age and in good health. In October 2022, she suffered two falls, leaving her with a broken left arm, shoulder, and broken right hip replacement. That is when her doctors first began to hint that she may be removed from her prescription and often withheld it while in the hospital. She was teased continuously abut the medication and her addiction to it.
She decided to get off this medication on her own in early 2023, as it is known to have many complicated side effects. After attempting to taper her meds without the supervision of her physician, and their lack of support, led to great success in that she was half way through the taper in under two months. At the halfway point of her taper, she was diagnosed with Cauda equina syndrome. Cauda equina syndrome is a medical emergency that happens when an injury or herniated disk compresses nerve roots at the bottom of your spinal cord. This condition is extremely painful and requires a rather simple surgery, otherwise, a patient could face paralysis from the waist down. Following diagnosis and an MRI, Anna’s doctors appeared they were not taking any steps to make appointments or referrals for her to get her surgery. Anna felt no other choice but to continue with her medication and reinstated meds to curb the pain she was feeling in her body and to be able to sleep nights.
Moving forward with her condition, still in pain and untreated, in June 2023, Anna requested a follow up with specialists and was given a Zoom appointment with a spine cord clinic. Although she got the referral, she was told she was sent to that department in error, and, no one in the clinic offered to help her or was available for her; however, they asked if she had heard of MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying aka euthanasia). She replied, yes and “she was not interested in that, she wanted to be treated for her condition.” Her doctors started to distance themselves from her, and when they offered her MAID again, Anna replied the same: “not interested.”
Months passed and, in the summer of 2023, wild fires began in BC, people were being moved to Prince George, Anna was one of them. In May, she witnessed people dying in the streets from the poison drug epidemic there. She did receive excellent care from the Pain Clinic at the hospital there. Upon returning to her home, her heath care needs still neglected, and she was receiving nothing for pain for her Cauda equina condition yet, having a couple of MRIs, nothing else was provided for her. Today, recounting this experience, Anna feels that the doctors and her medical team feel: “I will end up in so much pain, I will beg for MAID.”
This is medical neglect and abuse of one’s patient, to leaving them suffering for so long, without any treatment and no provisions for surgery.
Anna has since filed complaints with the Canadian Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia, filed an informed consent to treatment for her prescription, a representation agreement, and doing anything she can to get help and some relief. She feels she is being “placed in a corner”.
Twice in the winter of 2023, Anna went to the hospital with her legs so swollen she could not walk, she has not seen a doctor in her town since prior to the evacuation in May. She was in touch with the pain clinic in Prince George, BC, and then had an appointment there on 13 May 2024, at which time she received some cortisone shots, which eased some of the pain. Also as a result of this appointment, Anna participated in a 6-week Zoom conference session on Chronic Pain Management.
When Anna called CCC, she shared “I’m worried, I see what’s happening in the health care system.” When I tuned 63, my social media has been bombarded with ads for MAID.” I’ve dealt with mental health; I’ve also worked in that sector. Mental health support was inaccessible for many in the past, now it’s getting worse. Anna she was ghosted by those in mental health on 05 January, 2023 after speaking with her worker there and telling her of the taper she intended to start, and has not heard from them since.
This is especially why organizations like Compassionate Community Care is so important. We’ve started a mental health support fund and since this summer raised money for this specific initiative. Our goal is to have $10 000 for this specific program, every year, as calls continue to pour into our help lines asking for safe and accessible mental health support.
Anna, has no family: her siblings don’t care and neither her children; she’s been abandoned by those closest to her, she comments: “Technically I don’t have any family. I have a long-term prescription, from which withdrawal can last as long as ten or more years involving seizures, and possibly cause fatality. I am told that this is for my own good, but they originally gave me these medications in large amounts knowing at the time that I was both and alcoholic and an IV Drug user. Now they cite how bad this prescription is for my health. I could more readily believe this if the intervention had begun about twenty years ago. Now it is only being enforced to cover their assets.”
Anna feels the medical system has cut her off from the chance of surgery since she is an elderly person and since she’s not going to return to work, the government does not support surgeries for people like her. Her response, “I don’t agree with it. I’ve got some retirement pension plans, but it’s insane, I feel like a target, basically.”
She shared: “When I lay down, my legs start to swell, now the tables have turned. I can’t find a doctor to prescribe my full prescription meds for me. I’m still looking, the next step would be to find someone online, after that, it would be to buy them on the street. I have never done well with pain killers anyway as they have a tendency to make me very ill.”
The system is upside-down: it reverses against and targets the patients who have paid into it all their lives, and when they need the services, they should have access to, instead they are offered death, MAID.
Anna has not yet followed her doctors planned taper but instead still maintains her previous levels as she had medications left over from her taper last year. These are rapidly running out. She’s had no contact from her doctors. She’s having an appointment this week by phone with the pain clinic, and will see how that goes. In the meantime, it’s a waiting game.
*Named changed for confidentiality reasons.