A woman in Canada died after waiting nearly seven hours for emergency care at a hospital on New Year’s Eve in what has been described as a “senseless death.”
Allison Holthoff, 37, of the province of Nova Scotia, was rushed to the emergency room on the morning of December 31 after her condition worsened from what was initially believed to be stomach pain.
Her husband, Gunter Holthoff, told CBS News she had to be carried on her back to reach Cumberland Regional Health Care Center in the city of Amherst, Nova Scotia, at 11 a.m. local time before spending hours in the waiting room.
“Obviously, she was in pain,” he said on Sunday, recalling his wife’s excruciating pain and ordeal. “I was rolling her in the wheelchair, and she could barely sit up.”
Mrs. Holthoff’s pain worsened when the two waited for more than six hours in the emergency room waiting room. They were only able to see a doctor after 6 p.m, he said.
By then, the doctor said, it was too late. He underwent a preliminary examination, and the nurse asked for a urine sample.
Mrs. Holthoff then fell to the bathroom floor as she was unable to stand on her own and needed the help of two other people to get back into her wheelchair.
Her condition worsened to the point where she was unable to sit in her wheelchair and ended up on the floor, he said.
“I told the nurses and the lady at the desk a couple of times, ‘It’s getting worse,’ and nothing happened,” Holthoff said. “So the security guards finally pulled out a couple of blankets and brought us a cup of water, and I used that to put ice on his lips.”
As they continued to wait, Mrs. Holthoff told her husband that she felt as if she was dying.
“I think she actually started saying that she thought she was dying in the waiting room outside,” Gunter continued. “He said, ‘I think I’m dying. Don’t leave me to die here.'”
His wife was then taken to a room with a bed but no medical equipment. A nurse checked her blood pressure and found it was alarmingly low.
She then received more urgent care, and a doctor came to see her. An x-ray was prepared, but she could not breathe.
“The next thing is [her] eyes rolled back, and her chest started to heave. Something started ringing,” he said. “Next thing you hear on the PA, ‘code blue, code blue on X-ray.'”
“Even if she survived at that time … spent too much time without sufficient blood flow to the brain and vital organs. It wasn’t going to be a life worth living,” he said.
Holthoff said the system is “obviously broken” and “we need a change” as “I don’t want anyone else to go through it.”
Elizabeth Smith-McCrossin, a local MLA, wrote a letter to the provincial health minister requesting an “urgent investigation” into the case.
Alexandra Rose, a provincial coordinator for the Nova Scotia Health Coalition, said the situation was dire, and the province’s health system was in “bad trouble.”
“It’s so scary. And we have to ask, when is the breaking point? Is this the breaking point now that someone is dead? It was a senseless death,” she said.
