Friday, May 18, 2018

Difficult choices


A terminal ill man who needs around-the-clock care filed a lawsuit claiming doctors are pressuring him to go home or die in medically assisted death.

Roger Foley, of Canada, said he has been a patient at London Health Science Centres Victoria Hospital in Ontario for the past two years.

Foley suffers from an incurable brain disorder called cerebellar ataxia, a condition which limits his ability to move his arms and legs and leaves him unable to perform mundane tasks such as feeding himself and lifting himself up.

Because of the condition, Foley also has trouble speaking.

According to the February 14 lawsuit, Foley was given two options on how to move forward with his medical care: 'forced discharge' from the hospital 'to work with contracted agencies that have failed him' or medically assisted death.

Foley said although his deteriorating condition qualifies him for medically assisted death, he wants to live - and he wants to do so at the comfort of his own home, CTV News reports.

Foley, however, said he has run into some issues. In a video he recorded recently from his hospital bed, Foley said he does not want to return home under the care of nurses hired through contracted agencies.

He said there were two instances in which he received horrible home care providers and even contemplated suicide after one provider allegedly left him so sick he needed to be hospitalized.

 'I have been given the wrong medication,' he claimed. 'I have been provided food where I got food poisoning, I've had workers fall asleep in my living room, burners and appliances constantly left on, a fire, and I have been injured during exercises and transfers. When I report(ed) these things to the agency, I would not get a response.'

'Unfortunately, the Ontario health-care system and the Ontario home-care system has broken my spirit and sent my life into a void of bureaucracy accompanied by a lack of accountability and oversight,' he added.

Foley claimed that when he continued to complain the agency allegedly threatened to stop sending providers. He said he wants to manage his own health care team but needs the appropriate funding to hire workers. 

In the video, Foley said he applied for self-directed funding, which would help him hire his own home care providers, but he was denied.

Foley said if he refuses to the leave hospital under the care of contracted agency providers and does not allow a medically assisted death, he will have to pay $1,800 a day to stay in the hospital.

That's when he contacted a lawyer and sued the hospital, several health agencies, the Ontario government and the federal government. ..

Berger [Foley’s lawyer]also sent a letter to Canada's justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould demanding that all medically assisted deaths are halted until legislation is changed to ensure that all necessary services to help patients live are provided first. ..

 He wrote in his letter that the Canadian government ensure 'all necessary health services are provided before persons are misled into premature and inappropriate deaths because of their belief that they are a burden to society with no alternative to death'.

A spokesman for Wilson-Raybould told CTV News that she would be looking into Berger's letter. 

'Our government passed legislation that provides a national framework for medically assisted dying that protects our most vulnerable,' David Taylor said. 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5743117/Critically-ill-man-says-doctors-REFUSING-medical-care-offered-assisted-death.html#ixzz5FspMzIWI

1 comment:

  1. A landmark lawsuit has been filed by an Ontario man suffering from an incurable neurological disease. He alleges that health officials will not provide him with an assisted home care team of his choosing, instead offering, among other things, medically assisted death.

    “My condition is grievous and irremediable,” 42-year-old Roger Foley said from his bed at the London Health Science Centre’s Victoria Hospital in a video that was recently posted online. “But the solution is assisted life with self-directed funding.”

    According to Foley, a government-selected home care provider had previously left him in ill health with injuries and food poisoning. Unwilling to continue living at home with the help of that home care provider, and eager to leave the London hospital where he’s been cloistered for two years, Foley is suing the hospital, several health agencies and the attorneys general of Ontario and Canada in the hopes of being given the opportunity to set up a health care team to help him live at home again -- a request he claims he has previously been denied.

    “I have no desire to take up a valuable hospital bed,” Foley explained. “But at this point, it’s my only option.”

    Foley suffers from cerebellar ataxia, a brain disorder that limits his ability to move his arms and legs. The condition leaves him unable to perform mundane tasks on his own, like feeding himself. He also has trouble holding himself upright. Because of the condition, he even has difficulty speaking.

    “Unfortunately, my life story is narrated through the horrible prism of a progressive neurodegenerative disease,” Foley said with an audible tremor in his voice. “I have gone from being an active person to, on some days, not even being able to get out of bed.”

    Because Foley suffers from a terminal and incurable disorder, he qualifies for medically assisted death. But Foley does not want to die -- he simply wants to live at home.

    According to Foley’s lawsuit, which was filed on Feb. 14, the South West Local Health Integration Network (SW LHIN) -- the government-funded organization that facilitated his home care -- left him even worse off.

    “I have been given the wrong medications, I have been provided food where I got food poisoning, I’ve had workers fall asleep in my living room, burners and appliances constantly left on, a fire, and I have been injured during exercises and transfers,” Foley claimed. “When I report(ed) these things to the agency, I would not get a response.”

    Twice, Foley says he ended up in hospital because of the home care agencies contracted through the SW LHIN: once because of bad food, and a second time because the allegedly poor quality of care he was receiving left him contemplating suicide.

    “Unfortunately, the Ontario health-care system and the Ontario home-care system has broken my spirit and sent my life into a void of bureaucracy accompanied by a lack of accountability and oversight,” he said.

    Foley has asked to manage his own home care team. Doing that is called “self-directed care,” and Ontario recently created an agency called Self-Directed Personal Support Services Ontario (SDPSSO) to help co-ordinate such activities.

    https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/the-solution-is-assisted-life-offered-death-terminally-ill-ont-man-files-lawsuit-1.3845190

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