An Ontario mother says her son’s recent experience in Ontario’s overcrowded pediatric health care system has left her and her family terrified.
Last month, Simcoe, Ontario. The mother’s four-year-old son, Remy, was airlifted to Kingston General Hospital, some 350 kilometers from home, after a near-fatal sepsis infection.
“When your child comes down with a fever, this is not where you expect to end up,” an emotional Stephanie Rutherford told CTV News Toronto in an interview.
Normally, Remy would have been rushed to the pediatric intensive care unit (ICU) at McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. for treatment, but he was full.
Doctors at Rutherford’s local hospital, Norforlk General, originally thought the preschooler had a viral infection and sent him and his mother home with Tylenol and Advil.
But then things got worse.
“He couldn’t roll over, feed himself, go to the bathroom, complaining of neck pain, aching arms and legs, complaining of a headache,” Rutherford said.
Rutherford called 911 and said local doctors realized she needed treatment in a pediatric ICU.
But with McMaster full, as well as the children’s hospital in London, Remy was airlifted to Kingston, the nearest hospital with an available pediatric ICU bed at the time.
“They said if I hadn’t called 911 when I did, he would be dead… Parents’ worst nightmare,” Rutherford recalled.
Eventually, Remy was diagnosed with group A strep, which often causes strep throat or scarlet fever. In rare cases, like Remy’s, it can turn into a sepsis infection that can lead to multiple organ failure.
Rutherford said his kidneys, pancreas, liver and spleen were affected as a result of the infection and his body would blister every time he needed an IV. He was placed on a ventilator and treated with antibiotics during his stay at Kingston General, where he remains today.
Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones commented on Rutherford’s experience, saying it is “not ideal” for a family to receive treatment for a child so far away.
“But it’s also important to appreciate that by doing that airlift, that child was able to be evaluated and treated sooner,” he said.
Children’s hospitals in Ontario have seen an increase in the number of patients with respiratory illnesses in recent months, a problem that has been exacerbated by widespread staffing problems.
Locally, in early November, Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children announced it was canceling surgeries and redeploying staff to the ICU to address the surge.
In that case, Sick Kids’ head of intensive care, Dr. Steven Schwartz, said it was the right move.
“He literally saved lives,” he said in an interview with the Canadian Press published Monday.
For Rutherford’s part, she said she is grateful to the doctors and health care staff who are nursing her son back to health, but said she is appalled that her family and others were forced to be in this position.
“It was scary to be honest,” she said.
With files from Janice Golding and The Canadian Press