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Battling cancer and painful infections is no easy feat, but having to do so in a busy hospital hallway has left a Saskatoon family feeling broken.
Lloyd Coakwell, 74, is battling myelofibrosis, which is a bone marrow cancer where scar tissue builds up, preventing the bone marrow from producing enough healthy blood cells.
Around Thanksgiving, Lloyd developed a severe ear infection that had spread into the mastoid bone behind his ear.
His doctor recommended visiting the Saskatoon’s Royal University Hospital (RUH), and that’s where the nightmare began.
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Lloyd said he received treatment on a stretcher in a public hallway for six days. He said this ruined him mentally.
“It broke me,” he said.
That’s something Lloyd’s wife, Marilyn Coakwell, had never heard her husband say before.
“We’ve been married 46 years and this is the first time I’ve ever heard him say something has mentally broke him,” she said. “Farm boys don’t normally use the word ‘mentally broken.’”
The experience hurt Lloyd’s entire family. His daughter, Chelsea Coakwell, said watching her dad go through that had a huge impact on the family.
Lloyd’s stretcher was placed in the hallway near the emergency room.
Marilyn said hundreds of people were going about their daily lives in this hallway, while patients were in the hallway waiting for a room.
“Here’s this man fighting cancer, has a severe infection, not even lying in a bed, (he was) lying on a stretcher,” she said.
Marilyn said no one should have to battle any illness, or in Lloyd’s case, cancer, in conditions like that.
“Lloyd described the infection in his inner ear as someone taking his screwdriver and twisting it in your ear, so that’s what you have going on in your head, plus everything else going on… how can you possibly heal physically and mentally?” Marilyn asked.
After six days in the hallway, Lloyd was moved to his own room on the first floor near the old emergency room entrance.
“They got him a room with three walls and a curtain,” she said. “(Lloyd) said, ‘People have to know what is going on.'”
Family has questions for health-care system
Following the nearly week-long ordeal, Lloyd and his family have many unanswered questions.
Lloyd explained how 50 years ago, Saskatoon had three hospitals and a population of around 150,000 people. Now, the city has more than doubled in size and still has only three hospitals.
“There’s something wrong here with the system,” he said.
The family sent a letter to the provincial government, the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) and the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses.
The SHA’s response letter Marilyn received wasn’t reassuring.
“If they’re embarrassed about it, they should be,” she said. “If they don’t want to ’fess up to it well then why are you even in this job?”
Marilyn challenges Health Minister Jeremy Cockrill to come visit them, so he can see first-hand what it’s like for patients in RUH.
“I’m not seeing a whole lot of empathy and the only way you could really truly understand it is if you were in there.”
Cockrill said he agrees that it’s not acceptable for patients to be treated in hallways.
“We want to make sure patients are getting treatment in appropriate spaces,” he said. “Some of the stories are quite frankly not acceptable, we know there’s challenges in the healthcare system.”
Yet Marilyn said she doesn’t understand why this is still a problem, especially she says everyone knows there is a problem, and why both sides can’t work together to find a solution.
“That’s how you solve problems, working together as a team.”
The Coakwells want to remind government these are everyday people in the hospital going through this.
NDP Health Critic Keith Jorgenson said the lack of room is a long-term care issue.
“The primary problem isn’t the inflow into the (emergency room) it’s the outflow,” he said. “So people aren’t getting beds in a timely manner, it’s not necessarily that double the number of people are showing up.”
