MY FATHER: WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM AND HOW HE WAS TREATED BY THE OTTAWA HOSPITAL

 
My father arrived at the Hospital with broken bones, a stenosis of the spine and some sub arachnoid bleeding that got resolved completely in 3-4 days after his arrival. He was talking, discussing issues with me, signing documents, making rational decisions and was completely fine, in complete control of his mental faculties for a good five months after he got in the Hospital. While in the Hospital, from the start, he was allowed to become very ill. He was given an E-Coli infection in his lungs, he was allowed to develop blood clots in his legs, he was left anemic for most of the duration of his stay, his kidneys and heart were allowed to deteriorate due to the unattended anemia for the duration of his stay, etc. He was moved relatively early on while he was with the stenosis, namely while he was at high risk and this caused him to lose movement in all his limbs, one at a time, over the period of approximately one year, (three to four months after arrival he could still move everything fine). He was intubated and ex-tubated several times and in the process his vocal chords got seriously injured which rendered him unable to make any sounds when trying to speak until eventually he gave up trying.

His infections were not appropriately treated. In the beginning they got treated but the antibiotics were interrupted when the signs indicated he was getting better without checking to ensure that the bacteria got completely destroyed. As it had not, the same infection kept recurring. Because of this, the doctors did not even bother to treat it any longer, not until my father almost died. They allowed him to get septic about 10 times. Due to the septicemia, he got heart attacks that were attended to at the last minute only. Infections in his teeth were unattended to and were allowed to turn into abscesses. All dental consults were denied. His urea values were allowed to climb to such levels that he got into uremic shocks and became comatose. He was fed sugar both parent-ally and intravenously so they induced type 2 diabetes. By not changing his catheter more than 90 days at a time, (when it should be changed at max. after 30 days), bladder infections were induced. He was gravely neglected. He was left anemic for most of the duration which affected his heart and got him arrhythmia as well as kidney complications. It is likely that at his age, the doctors do not treat people the same way they treat a younger person. I was told numerous times that they expected him to die. They did very little to help him live and in fact by not doing what was required they were causing him to die. In doing so, they prolonged what could have been only a two months stay in the Hospital to a stay ten times as long and caused him a lot of pain in the process.

My father was a fighter. He cherished life more than anything and more than anyone I have ever known. He did not want to die. He would have put up with anything in the hope that someday he would find someone to look after him adequately, to treat him as any doctor should treat any patient, treat him to get him better. Every time he was intubated or got a tracheotomy, I asked him first if he agreed after I explained to him why he needed it. As soon as he understood that his life would be at risk if he didn't get the tracheotomy, he would agree to have it done. He nodded and, at first, while he could still talk, he said "yes, I agree" or "please let them do it", then he could only whisper "good" and after that, when he could no longer make any sounds at all, he would nod in approval because he wanted his life saved.

After he got damaged in so many ways while in the Hospital and after the doctors realized that he would not die on his own (because he had too strong a will to live), the doctors decided to "let him die" deliberately. They caused him pain and tried to use that pain to force me to sign his DNR. He needed suctioning because of the tracheotomy, but the nurses were ordered not to suction him. This caused him to choke, to gasp for air, and several times, it even caused him to get aspiration pneumonia. I wanted to help him, I’d ring the alarm, but the nurses would not show up when I rang the bell. Then, they told me they do not suction him anymore and that this was good for him. Of course these statements were absolutely not true and anyone could see how much this was hurting him. Then, I was suctioning him myself, to relief his pain and to enable him to breathe so that he would not asphyxiate and die. They prohibited me from suctioning him (although many other family members were allowed to do so for their loved ones) and placed a security guard at his bedside to prevent me from doing anything to help him.

This security guard was also instructed to sit next to me every time I visited him and to take notes about everything we (my dad and I) did or said during the visit. This lasted for the last 3 months of his stay in the Hospital, roughly since the doctors decided to apply to the Board to have my father’s life terminated. I assume it was because they did not want me to save him. The three times when I arranged for, requested that and tried to have him moved into another Hospital, I was denied permission to do so even though I had Power of Attorney for him, given by him, to me, for the sole purpose that I get to decide on his treatments and not the doctors! As well, I was supposed to decide in what Hospital he would get treated. Bottom-line, he was being held hostage in the Ottawa Hospital.

In fact, the Hospital denied me any rights under the Power of Attorney given to me by my father: they denied me all rights to access his medical or any records for the first 14 months of his stay, and then again, for the last 3 months of his stay in the Ottawa Hospital. These medical records included the medication he was on, the consults and treatments he got, etc. It was all kept secret from me as much as the Hospital staff could get away with, and they did! Even now I can’t get the access I was entitled to. Records that the Board should have been provided with, records from the notes taken by the security guard posted at my father’s bedside have never been disclosed but are of extreme importance since they show clearly that my father was not vegetative.

Hiding the records was the Hospital’s MO from the start. The Hospital probably feared that I would see the mistakes they made. In fact, the very same doctor who asked that my father’s life be terminated, Dr. Van Wallraven, in the first day he cared for my father, had ordered the wrong antibiotic and it was I who asked that the wrong medication be replaced with the correct medication. The doctor on call had to do this, at my request.

When it became clear that my father was not going to die on his own no matter what they did or didn't do to him, Dr. Van Wallraven applied to the Board to have my father’s life terminated. I was in shock. I had thought that with my Power of Attorney it would have been illegal or at least impossible for the doctors to obtain permission to go over my head in order to kill my father. However, they invoked a clause written in his power of attorney document whereby my father stated that he wants “me to carefully consider that if he was terminally ill, irreversibly comatose, or if he was in a persistent vegetative state, he would not want to be kept indefinitely on life support”. He had signed this under pressure. It was a standard document drafted by a lawyer in Montreal where he was living with my mom and my son who was attending McGill University. The lawyer, when questioned by my dad, explained that I would be the only one to make this decision and that no one else had a right, given this document, to decide what to do if he was on life support, no one other than me. (Quebec has no Consent and Capacity Boards!).

My father wanted this clause removed or changed anyway, but it was late in the day and I had come all the way from Ottawa to do this document at the lawyer’s office and it was getting to be the time when traffic would become very heavy, and I had two kids who were waiting for me in Ottawa, so we agreed to change it on another visit to Montreal, but for now, on a provisory basis, we would at least have one document in place. We did not get a chance to change this document because a few weeks after signing it, my dad fell and broke his hip and when he recovered he came to visit me in Ottawa and had the car accident that landed him in the Ottawa Hospital. I remember distinctly that the night before the accident, when my father was visiting me at my house in Ottawa, he reminded me that we have to return to the lawyer and adjust the document so that the clause allowing the doctors to put him to death under any conditions was removed. He asked me to call the lawyer on Monday at the first hour in the morning.

The Board wanted to know nothing about how this document was signed or where it was signed. It did not want to know about my dad's real wishes or that he intended to have it modified. The Board did not want to know about the change in circumstances which happened due to the fact that my dad signed that document under Quebec law and there, my decision could not be challenged (I'm still not sure it could be challenged here anyway). The Board did not want to acknowledge the fact that the clause they were referring to, started by saying that my father wants me, “Diana Ford, (not the doctors, or the court, not the state,) to carefully consider that in case of... it is his wish that...”. The Board did not want to hear that I had carefully considered and that I knew that this situation did not apply to his condition since he was neither terminally ill, nor comatose, nor persistently vegetative.

Now that you understand the background against which this tragedy was played, here comes the most revolting part: my father was definitely not “terminally ill”, definitely not “irreversibly comatose”, and definitely not “persistently vegetative”. I had no idea why the doctor took this matter to the Board to start with. According to the doctor’s testimony in the Board Hearing, on June 18, 2012, the diagnosis of “persistently vegetative had not been made yet on April 19, when the doctor applied to the Board to have my father’s life terminated. To this day, it is still unclear why, on what grounds had the doctor applied to the Board to have my father’s life terminated. Anyway. We, the doctor and I, were ordered by the Board to make full disclosure to each other but in the written decision, the Hospital was not ordered to make any disclosure to us what so ever. I was the only party ordered to disclose, so they did not. In conclusion I had no clue why, on what basis this application was made to the Board. Furthermore, I did not understand why my Power of Attorney would not be respected, on what basis or for what reason. As well, under the Ontario Consent Act, I was supposed to be explained why the doctors would change the treatment and what they were changing it to. If I did not agree, they had no right to change it. They never told me what they were proposing or why. I only found out after they had filed what the proposed treatment plan was but not why they applied since they did not specify the reason in any of the documents filed with the Board. In the Hearing the doctor states quite clearly that he had never talked with me since December of 2011. However, under the Consent Act of Ontario he has an obligation to do so, to keep me fully informed and to give me all the details in order for me to make an informed decision weather or not to consent to his proposed change in the plan of treatment.

All documents that were related to this case were hidden by the Hospital and kept as highly classified material between the time the doctor made his application to the Board and the time the case was heard. Whenever I was in the Hospital I was not allowed to see any part of my father’s medical record. In the Board Hearing, after never having talked with me, after never having informed me of any change in my father's condition and after six months of completely no contact with any doctor at all, (last meeting with a doctor at the Hospital has been January 5 and this was June 18, the date of the Hearing) the doctor declared that my father was vegetative. Not only was this condition never documented anywhere, not in my father's chart, not in his consults, not ever discussed and I had never been advised about this, but also, there were no medical tests ordered by this doctor to properly assess my father’s condiction, tests that could support this theory. There was a total void of evidence. No MRI, no CT scan, no EEG, no neurological consult, no specialist opinions, nothing that would represent scientific proof or hard evidence he was really in a persistent vegetative state. In fact all the EEG, CT scan and MRI of his brain, had they been brought into the hearing as proof, they would have shown that these was an absence of scientific, medical evidence that he was vegetative. According to the criteria set in the article the doctor mentioned when questioned why he believes the patient was vegetative, (when he stated that my father matched the criteria described in that 1994 article), the clinical assessment had to be supported by medical imagery of the brain and these tests were supposed to show specific results that they did not show. As well, since the clinical condition my father was in could match any number of various diagnosis, there was no evidence brought in the hearing showing that there was a differential diagnosis carried out and in that particular differential diagnosis all the other numerous possibilities of medical problems were considered but eliminated and that the only plausible explanation for his condition was that he was vegetative. In fact, he had been discontinued from testing and any lab work or imagery for the six prior weeks period in which he was not given antibiotics although he had a severe pneumonia. Hence, it is far more probable that his lack of responsiveness was due to a generalized septicemia.

There had been no effort to assess or diagnose this patient at all. All the doctor offered was his opinion, that was an opinion of a doctor who was not specialized in this field and who did not consult a neurologist, an opinion that my dad matched some criteria for a clinical diagnosis of ‘vegetative” described in a 1994 article that the doctor could not even remember the name of in some medical journal but that the doctor had no copies of when he gave his evidence or in cross-examination. It was an unsupported, previously undisclosed, totally kept secret diagnosis, presented in a surprise statement. When asked how he assessed the alleged “persistent vegetative” state that my father was allegedly in, the doctor said he just looked at my dad and because my dad did not respond to him, in the ten minutes prior to the Hearing when he examined him, it became clear to him that my father met the criteria for a “persistent vegetative state”. The doctor also never specified what those criteria, when asked to explain them in cross-examination, he refused and he also refused to specify how those criteria matched my father’s condition in particular.

According to his own testimony, this doctor is not a specialist in the neurological field, he is not a diagnostician, he is not a neurologist. In reality, he is not even a real doctor because his experience is in the financial/accounting field, finding ways to save money for the health care system, not in saving patients, not in saving lives, not in saving the patient’s family members from worry and distress. On the contrary, he never actually practiced medicine in order to actually heal patients! My father represented a financial burden and any method was considered a good method if it resulted in getting rid of the burden. Furthermore, the Hospital probably feared that all the damages they caused to my father’s health might become a liability if no steps were taken to mitigate the damages. If the Board gave them the approval to "let him die" (as they love to say “let die” as a euphemism for “kill” patients), then all the damages they had caused him, they could argue were caused because it was the patient's wish to be "let to die".

In reality, it is true that by the time of the Hearing, the patient, my dad, had become less responsive (although not totally unresponsive). The day before the Hearing, my children and I, went to visit him and we spent a bit of time with him. It was father's day. We told him about it and he smiled. He blinked and he smiled at us many times in response to what we told or asked him but he was visibly tired and less responsive than usually. What we did not know and had no way of knowing, because we were never told, was that on May 7, the day of the first Hearing, when we adjourned until June 18, in order to get an independent second opinion, in order to have a doctor who was not affiliated with the Hospital examine my father (although we did not know what he had to be examined for, because we were never told it was "a persistent vegetative state" that the doctors were going to claim), the doctors stopped all regular blood tests, all X-Rays and all treatments. In other words, the day the Board ordered and the day the doctors agreed to maintain my father on the same level of care as before, to continue the same treatment he was on, they stopped all tests, all diagnostic, preventive or medical treatments of any kind.

On May 7th, my dad's WBCs, which had been constantly increasing for the 2-3 weeks prior to May 7, reached a peak at 15.3 (which is very high, about 2x the normal). Also, his chest X-Ray showed he had pneumonia and his cultures showed E-Coli growth in his lungs. This is precisely when the doctors stopped treating him for his pneumonia. No wonder that on June 18, 1.5 months later, he was irresponsive when the doctor went to see him and talk with him. My father was getting comatose due to the septicemia! Also, the independent doctor who came special from Montreal, at great effort and expense, special to examine him, one week before the Board Hearing, was not allowed by the Hospital doctor to examine my father at all. He was not even allowed to see my father’s Medical Chart! It is quite possible that the reason he was denied access to examine the patient was so that he may have no access to the Patient’s Chart or we would have discovered that the patient was no longer being treated and that he was simply left to die for several weeks! Obviously there was a deliberate cover-up: be it from fear that we would find out that they had stopped treating my father completely or maybe they had made other mistakes.

Now let's be clear about a few things: the doctors had an obligation to tell me if they ever found that my dad was vegetative but they never did. They were bound by my Power of Attorney and by my being the closest and only relative of adult age in Ottawa. They had a signed document from me telling them that my father had to be on level 1 care. They had no right to change his level of care without my signing for it, no matter what. But, in addition to that, the Board directed them specifically to maintain my father on the same treatment as before. On the very same day they were ordered to continue my father on the same treatment, they unilaterally, without advising me and with great effort to keep this whole action hidden from me, discontinued all treatments my father had been receiving and administered no antibiotics when they knew he was very ill (WBC at 15.3 and lungs drenched in water). They knew that if left untreated, this illness would lead to his death. They disallowed the independent medical consult, despite the direction of the Board, despite having adjourned the Board Hearing specially for that purpose.
They disallowed the independent doctor to even look at the patient’s chart. A complete cover-up of their operation! On June 18, during the Hearing, the doctor announced to me, for the first time ever, that my father was in a "persistent vegetative state". The doctor never considered that the word "persistent" before the words "vegetative state" had a meaning and that it meant that the patient was completely oblivious to his environment for 12-16 consecutive weeks, minimum, in order to be able to be considered, let alone be declared, in a "persistent vegetative state". But in the application to the Board, the doctors described my father as tracking people with his eyes, hence, he was aware of his surroundings and consequently, not vegetative when they applied to the Board. So why did they apply, on what basis?

The Board could not be bothered with the law or with our Constitution that guarantees us the "right to life, freedom and security" which my father was completely denied and so was I, along with him, when they dismissed my Power of Attorney on no grounds. The Board did not consider that I had never been informed of what the doctors were going to say. They did not hold that to be in breach of the law despite the fact that it was. The Board did not see any problem with the doctors discontinuing my father's treatment, despite the fact that the Board had ordered the doctors to maintain my father on the same treatment and level of care as he had been on until then so that they may hear the case first and make a decision. The Board did not care that the expert doctor was denied access to my father’s Chart and that contrary to their own direction to the doctor, the doctor disallowed the examination of the patient. The Board cut my submissions short while allowing the Hospital lawyer extra time with theirs. The Board did not take my evidence but allowed all of theirs. The Board did not consider that withholding treatment, especially treatment for pneumonia in a 89 year old, can and is reasonable to assume that it will, lead to death and that, according to our Criminal Code, this is a criminal offense.

The Board ordered that I comply with the doctor's Proposed Plan of Treatment and claimed that this plan of treatment did not involve ending my father’s life. However, the plan included a “do not resuscitate” step, a “stop all testing and all treatments” step and, "if the patient got worse", a “withdraw the parental feeding tube” step in order to let him starve to death. But that’s not even the worst part! The worst is that he would have been left to dehydrate to death (which comes with exploding veins and tremendous pain). However, the Hospital was allegedly doing all this in the name of compassion! The “compassion to cause somebody death, to cause a person’s organs to explode due to starvation and to cause his veins and arteries to burst due to dehydration. As well, it meant the compassion to get him into heart failure due to dehydration and to cause him to asphyxiate due to the lung failure induced by the heart failure”. How compassionate! All this, after having denied him cardiological consults, neurological consults, even dental consults that left him with decaying, infected teeth that turned into gangrenes, etc. The “compassionate people” with their “world-class care” sure give you the desire to put your life in their hands, don’t they?

To further prove their “compassion”, I have pictures of my father’s legs while in the Ottawa Hospital with bruises and cuts on his legs, bleeding, although he could not move and he could not reach the legs, I have pictures of his gangrenes in his mouth. I did not take pictures, but it was charted in his medical records that his hands were wrapped so he could not scratch when he had skin rash from not being cleaned properly....When I found him dirty and when I asked the PCA to have him cleaned, I was told that they would not do it because he would only make himself dirty again. So they tied his hands instead, in order to prevent him from scratching when his skin was irritated due to lack of cleaning. Also, the “world-class care” provided included placing him in isolation with patients who had MRSA, VRE, C-DIff and Hepatitis when he was not infected with any of these. Frankly, the type of "world-class care" he received from the “compassionate people" at the Ottawa Hospital is what I would not wish on anyone! He had insurance for private Hospital room provided by his previous employer but was denied his right and the Hospital insisted in placing him in isolation in the same room with one or more infected people when he was not infected or contagious in any way.

Since I had an order to comply with the Plan of Treatment proposed by his doctors by July 6th, 2012 (exactly two months after they had stopped treating him and was left with an untreated fulminating pneumonia due to the Hospital induced infection with E-Coli in his lungs and with absolutely no antibiotics), since I knew my father did not want to die, since I understood how horrible and unacceptable it would be if I allowed for their "proposed plan of treatment" to be applied, I did all I could to get my father out of the Ottawa Hospital. Miraculously, I managed to get him transferred to Montreal on July 4th, two days before the dead-line. Until then, the doctor was obliged to still treat him at a level 1 care. In Montreal, I was informed that the Ottawa Hospital had put him on a level 4 of care, (not even a 2 or 3) since May 7th. I was also told by his admitting physician that Dr. Van Walraven had contacted them and tried to apply his persuasion power on them not to treat my father any differently, to DNR him, to not treat him for pneumonia and basically, to just let him die.

Since my father had not been tested for anything and had no X-Rays in two months, the Montreal Hospital had absolutely no idea what my father needed or what he should be treated for. The papers that the Ottawa Hospital put in the hands of the nurse who came in the ambulance from Ottawa to Montreal with my father and I, were papers carefully sealed in an envelope for the doctor in charge in Montreal and contained no test results, no medical history, no medication lists but the decision of the Board in Ontario asking that the patient be put to death. Once in Montreal all the tests had to be taken and the cultures had to be grown, the X-Rays done and interpreted, and by the time they were ready to commence the required treatment (after they received all necessary lab results showing that my father was suffering from a very bad case of pneumonia gone septic because of the neglect he was treated with in the Ottawa Hospital), by the time the doctors discussed with me how they intended to treat him, he died. I was called in to discuss with the doctor how he was planning to treat my father who had already been placed on broad spectrum antibiotics right away, before the cultures were back from the lab). In those 30 minutes I talked with the doctors, my father died and when I returned to his room, he was cold.

This is the actual account of what happened. It is true he suffered but he did not have to suffer! All his suffering was caused by the doctors who did not want to treat him. All his illnesses were Hospital induced. He would have been out of the Hospital in 2 months instead of 20, had he received proper care.

SUMMARY:
• He was not treated from the start to the level of care that was required
• He was given E-Coli in the lungs while he was unconscious in the Hospital bed
• He was never treated to heal his E-Coli so he got repeat pneumonias due to this bacteria
• He was left with unchanged catheters for longer than 90 days at a time so he got UTI and left untreated, the UTI became bladder infections
• He was left anemic which affected his kidneys and his heart: the heart became irregular and the kidney was not functioning the way it was supposed but, since nothing was done about it, the heart turned tachycardia and bradycardia while the kidney’s uremic values raised till he got into uremic shock
• Also, he was left untreated for the pneumonias till he got septic and because of this, he got strokes and heart attacks
• He was left with unattended broken teeth that got infected and again, left untreated they became abscesses and gangrenes
• He was moved around with steno-sis until eventually, four months after his hospitalization he started to gradually lose range of movement: first in one leg, then in the other, then he became paraplegic, then one arm and then the other till he became effectively quadriplegic
• He was intubated and extubated each time he was allowed to go into a septic or into a uremic shock because he was losing oxygen
• The numerous intubations affected his vocal chords and eventually, some five months after the Hospitalization, he could not make audible sounds anymore but was still trying to talk by whispering
• After all the damages the Hospital inflicted on him he was no longer deemed worthy of saving
• The monitors that were his only safety device at a time when he had frequent and sudden drops in oxygen and blood pressure at levels that were putting his life at risk were discontinued while left at his bed side because they were attached to the bed anyway but not to him
• The antibiotics he needed for his pneumonias were no longer administered till he was septic and in a close to death condition
• The tests necessary to monitor the heart and the lung condition were less and less frequent although he was more and more ill
• The cycle was he got ill but not treated until he was almost dead at which time there was a pro forma attempt to treat him which would yield no results because he had been left to get too sick and then some older nurse with lots of experience, lots of seniority and with a bit of conscience left would call the RACE team who would react promptly and efficiently, return him to ICU where they did save his life each time because that is what they do and they are good at it.
• After such episodes he would become unconscious, suffer from a heart attack or a stroke, get more ill than ever before and the situation would be touch and go for a while
• As soon as he would be no longer comatose and at an imminent risk of dying, he would be immediately taken out of ICU and put in a ward where the cycle would repeat only, each time, with a team that cared less for him than the previous one, because he was now more damaged and therefore more of a liability with even less of a chance to make “a meaningful recovery” (according to them).
• Eventually the doctors would absolutely not care for any symptoms or any of his organs and state so without shame (I have documented evidence of the statements and of the lack of care)
• In February all my access to any records was blocked by the Hospital. After my bitter complaints, a letter from the Hospital lawyer and a Patient’s Advocate direction was now allowing me a once a week access to his records instead of a once a day. Of course that would not be helpful if the wrong medication was administered. I would not be able to correct the mistake.
• In March he was assigned a doctor who would not belong in any team of doctors, was not rotating every 2 weeks like all the treating doctors who were working in that unit and was not even a treating doctor but one that handles administrative duties mostly related to saving money.
• In April, on a false premise and invoking libellous claims, the doctor went and applied to have my father’s life terminated by stopping all tests and treatments and by taking out the parental tube.
• They did not want to ever take out the tracheal tube from fear that he might talk and say he did not wish to die.
• Every time I had tried to get my father moved to another Hospital or requested to have him discharged, the doctor refused to do so or refused to sign the forms that had been prepared for the discharge.
• On April 15TH the doctor received my father’s Power of Attorney document and by April 19TH the Application to terminate my father’s life was written, reviewed, edited, approved, signed and submitted to the Board who had filed and advised the parties that such an application had been filed and approved to be heard within a week. (who has the time to find counsel, find the money, prepare a case, a defence of one’s life in only one week? I guess the intent is that no one should be able to defend themselves against the doctors or perhaps it is deemed as a futile exercise!)
• The doctors did not specify the medical reason for which they applied to the CCB.
• The doctors never talked to me about their proposed plan of treatment, nor did they explain to me that there was a change in my father’s medical condition, on the contrary, they kept telling me he was stable and that nothing had changed in his medical condition
• To get their application in, given that I had Power of Attorney from my father, there had to be a major problem with me, something I had done totally wrong for them to be able to revoke my power of attorney (in fact that had never been done before). The doctors made up a story that was completely libellous in which they claimed that I was being investigated for fraud by my father’s bank implying that I was some sort of criminal.
• The doctors were told to make disclosure but they never did, never told us what they were going to claim, why they made this application to the Board and why they were questioning my acting in the patient’s best interest.
• On May 7th, the first Hearing in the Consent and Capacity Board and adjournment was granted to us for the purpose of an examination conducted on my father by an independent doctor, unaffiliated with the Ottawa Hospital
• The decision of the Board on May 7th, stipulated that an independent doctor should be allowed to examine my father, that his complete medical records should be made available to us and to that doctor, that my father should be continued on the same level of care and medical treatment as he was until now so that the Board would have time to re-convene and hear this case.
• None of the above happened. The medical records were hidden from me. Between May 7th and the end of my father’s stay in the Ottawa Hospital I was never shown his records but I was told they were classified information and that I was restricted from seeing them because they were related to the Board Hearing (not that it made any sense, on the contrary: we were supposed to get full disclosure & transparency especially given the order and the access to information laws)
• The records were only sent up until May 7th but not past that date and the records from the notes taken by the security guard were not included in the pile of records we received.
• The independent medical examination was denied by the Hospital doctor and my father’s medical records were prohibited to the independent doctor for viewing when he asked for them and when he spent 5 hours waiting outside the patient’s room in the hallway, less than 2 feet away from the Chart that was not used by anyone but was just sitting there, in front of us.
• The treatment changed from a level 1 to a level 4 according to the Montreal doctors who informed me that there had been no tests, no lab work, no pathology, no imagery and no X-rays conducted on the patient starting May 7th, unlike the regular tests that had been conducted until then. Also, it was known he had a pneumonia at that time but there was no treatment given and no antibiotics for the infection although his WBC levels were twice the normal.
• On June 18, in the Hearing the doctor claimed the patient was in a persistent vegetative state.
• This doctor was no specialist, he had called no neurologist to examine my dad, he allowed no independent doctor to examine my dad, he stated that all doctors of the Hospital were of the same opinion but had no documentation to prove it, he had not charted it himself, he had no scientific tests that would indicate his diagnosis was correct and he had not considered any other alternative causes to my father’s lack of responsiveness, not even septicemia, although it was obvious since he was left untreated for 6 weeks for a fulminating pneumonia and this is how he usually reacted to septicemia.
• The Board ordered that I comply by July 6th, but I moved him to Montreal on July 4th, believing that he had been treated to a level 1 until then.
• In Montreal I was told he had been treated at a level 4 (no testing, no treatment) since May 7th, and they had no clue what was wrong with him so they needed to start testing him completely.
• By the time the test results were back and the doctors there were ready to treat him, his infection with E-Coli in the lungs was so rampant that it killed him.
• I found him dead in his room after I was out with the doctors for 20 minutes to decide on a plan of treatment and the appropriate medication for my dad. He had died asphyxiated, from pneumonia.

THE CANADIAN CRIMINAL CODE STATES THE FOLLOWING:
CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE
Marginal note:Criminal negligence
219. (1) Every one is criminally negligent who
o (a) in doing anything, or
o (b) in omitting to do anything that it is his duty to do,
shows wanton or reckless disregard for the lives or safety of other persons.
Definition of “duty”
(2) For the purposes of this section, “duty” means a duty imposed by law.
R.S., c. C-34, s. 202.
Marginal note:Causing death by criminal negligence
220. Every person who by criminal negligence causes death to another person is guilty of an indictable offense and liable
(a) where a firearm is used in the commission of the offense, to imprisonment for life and to a minimum punishment of imprisonment for a term of four years; and
(b) in any other case, to imprisonment for life.

221. Every one who by criminal negligence causes bodily harm to another person is guilty of an indictable offense and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten

5) A person commits culpable homicide when he causes the death of a human being,
o (a) by means of an unlawful act;
o (b) by criminal negligence;
o (c) by causing that human being, by threats or fear of violence or by deception, to do anything that causes his death; or
o (d) by willfully frightening that human being, in the case of a child or sick person.
Death that might have been prevented
224. Where a person, by an act or omission, does any thing that results in the death of a human being, he causes the death of that human being notwithstanding that death from that cause might have been prevented by resorting to proper means.
Death from treatment of injury
225. Where a person causes to a human being a bodily injury that is of itself of a dangerous nature and from which death results, he causes the death of that human being notwithstanding that the immediate cause of death is proper or improper treatment that is applied in good faith.
R.S., c. C-34, s. 208.
Marginal note:Acceleration of death
226. Where a person causes to a human being a bodily injury that results in death, he causes the death of that human being notwithstanding that the effect of the bodily injury is only to accelerate his death from a disease or disorder arising from some other cause.
MURDER, MANSLAUGHTER AND INFANTICIDE
Marginal note:Murder
229. Culpable homicide is murder
(a) where the person who causes the death of a human being
o (i) means to cause his death, or
o (ii) means to cause him bodily harm that he knows is likely to cause his death, and is reckless whether death ensues or not;
(b) where a person, meaning to cause death to a human being or meaning to cause him bodily harm that he knows is likely to cause his death, and being reckless whether death ensues or not, by accident or mistake causes death to another human being, notwithstanding that he does not mean to cause death or bodily harm to that human being; or
(c) where a person, for an unlawful object, does anything that he knows or ought to know is likely to cause death, and thereby causes death to a human being, notwithstanding that he desires to effect his object without causing death or bodily harm to any human being.
Classification of murder
231. (1) Murder is first degree murder or second degree murder.
Marginal note:Planned and deliberate murder
(2) Murder is first degree murder when it is planned and deliberate
Contracted murder
(3) Without limiting the generality of subsection (2), murder is planned and deliberate when it is committed pursuant to an arrangement under which money or anything of value passes or is intended to pass from one person to another, or is promised by one person to another, as consideration for that other’s causing or assisting in causing the death of anyone or counseling another person to do any act causing or assisting in causing that death.
5) Irrespective of whether a murder is planned and deliberate on the part of any person, murder is first degree murder in respect of a person when the death is caused by that person while committing or attempting to commit an offense under one of the following sections:
o (e) section 279 (kidnapping and forcible confinement); or
o (f) section 279.1 (hostage taking).
Murder reduced to manslaughter
232. (1) Culpable homicide that otherwise would be murder may be reduced to manslaughter if the person who committed it did so in the heat of passion caused by sudden provocation.
Marginal note:What is provocation
(2) A wrongful act or an insult that is of such a nature as to be sufficient to deprive an ordinary person of the power of self-control is provocation for the purposes of this section if the accused acted on it on the sudden and before there was time for his passion to cool.
Marginal note:Questions of fact
(3) For the purposes of this section, the questions
o (a) whether a particular wrongful act or insult amounted to provocation, and
o (b) whether the accused was deprived of the power of self-control by the provocation that he alleges he received,
are questions of fact, but no one shall be deemed to have given provocation to another by doing anything that he had a legal right to do, or by doing anything that the accused incited him to do in order to provide the accused with an excuse for causing death or bodily harm to any human being.
235. (1) Every one who commits first degree murder or second degree murder is guilty of an indictable offense and shall be sentenced to imprisonment for life.

YOU BE THE JUDGE OF HOW THE LAW IS APPLIED AND WHY IT IS THAT OUR CONSTITUTION GRANTS US EQUALITY UNDER THE LAW BUT OUR POLITICIANS AND OUR JUDICIAL SYSTEM DISREGARD THE LAW WHEN APPLIED BY THE MADICAL COMMUNITY TO DELIBERATELY DESTROY THE LIFE OF PATIENTS. I DON'T SEE ANYWHERE IN THE CRIMINAL CODE SAYING THAT THE CRIMINAL CODE OF CANADA APPLIES TO ALL CITIZENS EQUALLY EXCEPT FOR DOCTORS AND THAT BOARDS AND COURTS ARE DIRECTED TO LOOK THE OTHER WAY WHEN THE DOCTORS EXPRESS INTENT TO KILL! IF THIS IS THE LAW THEN AT LEAST I EXPECT THE PROPER GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS RESPONSIBLE FOR PRODUCING OUR ACTS TO STATE IT CLEARLY FOR ALL TO SEE AN KNOW.

OUR CANADIAN COURTS (AND ESPECIALLY IN ONTARIO WHERE WE HAVE A CONTROL AND CAPACITY BOARD UNLIKE ANY OTHER PROVINCE) GRANT TO DOCTORS PERMISSION TO KILL WITH IMPUNITY, PERMISSION THAT IS SANCTIONED BY OUR GOVERNMENT VIA JUDGES ON BOARDS AND COURTS APPOINTED TO THEIR POSTS BY CORRUPT POLITICIANS WHO USE THE DOCTORS' CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS AND THE DOCTORS' INFLUENCE TO HELP THEM GET ELECTED. AND THE MEDIA KEEPS QUIET BECAUSE THEY ARE AFRAID OF LAWSUITS! WHAT A SYSTEM!