This is a follow-up letter to the one we sent to the Cape Breton Post regarding our experience in the Cape Breton Regional Hospital emergency room during a nine-and-a-half hour wait on Oct. 16, 2020. The letter was published under the heading “Emergency Room Like War Zone” on Oct. 22, 2020.
Events since then have prompted this letter. The doctor in emergency ordered an MRI for my wife on Oct. 16. The MRI did not happen until Dec. 14, 2020 at 9:30 p.m.
Before we got the MRI and CAT scan we had to go to emergency twice by ambulance. The cost was $146 a trip which is expensive for seniors. Especially at Christmas time. The bottom line was a fractured bone in the groin area. Maybe if my wife had received an MRI sooner the trips to emergency would have been prevented.
In addition, a couple of days after the letter appeared in the paper, I received call from volunteer services telling me that as a volunteer at the hospital (almost 20 years) I should not have become involved with the situation at emergency. We told the person who called me at home that I was there as a private citizen, not a volunteer.
I was told that I did not have to resign, but it might be for the better. Imagine after 20 years of volunteering. That left me with no choice. I resigned. We felt management at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital were not pleased with the letter.
Elaine and I know from the support we have received that others have similar horror stories to express. The situation is worse when other emergency rooms are closed.
There has to be a better system for the emergency department. This is a provincial responsibility.
This is not to take away from the great work the people are doing at the hospital. Their voices are also not being heard.
We certainly will be telling our story to the appropriate politicians and to health authority officials.
In 2021, we urge people who have similar concerns to speak out regarding the state of health care in Cape Breton.
Don & Elaine MacRae
Sydney
