A mother of an autistic teenager said she had to battle staff at hospitals in Quesnel and Prince George last weekend to get appropriate care for her son.
It took more than 24 hours and a hospital transfer for 13-year-old Colten Roy to get his appendix removed after doctors determined the routine surgery couldn't be done in his home community of Quesnel. Roy's mother, Michelle Fisher, said she had to consistently advocate on her son's behalf to even get him admitted to hospital in Quesnel and to get bumped up the surgical queue in Prince George.
Fisher said she believes a lack of funding is at the root of the problem, which saw her son spend hours in waiting rooms and hallways, all the while in excruciating pain from the inflamed appendix.
The ordeal began last Saturday evening when Fisher took Roy to G.R. Baker Memorial Hospital in Quesnel with the teenager complaining of abdominal pain. Fisher said despite being able to see three open beds in the emergency room, it took hours for her son to be seen by a physician and eventually admitted.
"He was on the floor, crying, uncomfortable and upset," Fisher said of her son's condition during the wait to see a doctor.
Although appendicitis was suspected, the diagnosis was not immediately confirmed due to a lack of ultrasound technicians on site. Fisher said she was told some of the medical imaging staff don't work weekends and are rarely called in. Roy eventually had the ultrasound on Sunday morning.
Northern Health spokeswoman Eryn Collins said although there are not full-time staff for ultrasounds on weekends in Quesnel, there is a system in place to call staff in.
"Weekend ultrasound services at G.R. Baker are available on a voluntary call basis," she said, noting two procedures were done last weekend. "That's a process that's worked for many years. It's the exception rather than the rule that a tech wouldn't be available."
Once the ultrasound was complete, Roy had to wait again, this time to have a physician interpret the results and Fisher was flabbergasted as to the reason why.
"They said the doctor is not coming in until they're done church," Fisher recalled.
She asked why the emergency room doctor couldn't be called up in the interim, but was told that wasn't possible.
Eventually the diagnosis was confirmed, but Fisher was told they couldn't do her son's surgery in Quesnel and that he would have to be transferred to Prince George.
Collins, who was unable to speak to the specific case, said Quesnel is equipped for some pediatric surgeries, but there are instances when patients have to moved
"Quesnel does do routine pediatric surgery procedures," she said. "For example they do a lot of dental procedures; and ear, nose and throat procedures are done on a regular basis. A routine appendectomy would or could be done in Quesnel, unless the patient were considered a high-risk by the anesthetist or their physician."
By the time the transfer occurred it was mid-afternoon on Sunday and after arriving at UHNBC, Roy spent several hours in a bed in a hallway because no room was available.
"The emergency department was literally packed and overflowing," Fisher said. "At one point there was someone sleeping on the ground between the two doors [at the entrance] because there were no seats in the waiting room or the hallway or anywhere else."
Collins acknowledged that the Prince George hospital has experienced high patient volume and said although it's not ideal to have patients wait in hallways, their care is not compromised. She said even in the case of a transfer, it's not automatic that a patient will be moved into a room immediately upon arriving.
Roy was eventually brought into a room, where Fisher said she was told numerous times that they were going to prep him for surgery, only to find out shortly thereafter that another case had bumped them down the list.
By that point it had been 18 hours since Roy last ate or drank anything and no one had been able to get in a IV to help replenish his fluids.
"They were unable to get an IV in here in Quesnel, the nurses aren't used to giving children IVs," Fisher explained. "They did try once here in Quesnel and that was it. So he had no fluids, he wasn't allowed to take any drinks by mouth."
Finally, shortly after 8 p.m. on Sunday evening, Roy was taken to the operating room waiting area, with the surgery completed about 2 1/2 hours later. The procedure was successful, but the saga continued Monday during the recovery stage when Roy wasn't provided with important medication he takes due to his autism and other mental ailments.
"He needs to take it in the morning and at night," Fisher said, noting she had put the medication on forms and told staff verbally about its importance. "It had been overlooked by the doctor, supposedly, who didn't put it on a piece of paper for him to have his medication."
Because it wasn't on his chart, Fisher said, staff weren't able to administer the drug. Eventually late Monday afternoon, that situation too was resolved - but not without significant wrangling.
Collins said procedures are in place to ensure patients are on the right medicine when they're in hospital.
"Medications are ordered by the admitting physician based on the histories that have been taken and information that has been provided as someone is being admitted and medications are provided during inpatient stays," she said. "Without being able to speak to the circumstances of a particular case, there are often medical reasons why giving a medication in certain circumstances isn't appropriate depending on the person's condition."
Fisher said at every step of the way she had to demand the intervention of supervisors to get anything done. Eventually she said it took a threat to go public with her story to get her son's case expedited.
"It's not until say you're contacting media that they do something," Fisher said.
