"My Experience With My Friend's Cancer Journey (Part 2 of 3)"

My friends’ Immunotherapy treatments for Cancer were scheduled for mid Winter which overlapped with the Christmas Holiday break. This resulted in treatment being postponed to the new year. We felt that was too long to go without treatment. Illness doesn’t take a break because it’s a Holiday. During this time, my friend was starting to feel bloated and was in some pain. They could feel something lumpy around the belly button area, which seemed to move around. The next CT scan was scheduled for late December 2023. At this appointment, my friend explained to the Technician the lumpiness in the belly button area so they could also focus on that as well as the routine CT scan. The results would be delivered at the next Oncology appointment scheduled the first week of January 2024.

The bloating and moving lump continued and the pain became worse. Several days prior to the Oncology visit, my friend placed a call to the Family Doctor and the Tom Baker Cancer Centre. Both advised to go to Emergency. When my friend questioned whether they should go to the Foothills, where the Cancer Centre was or to South Health Campus (which was closer), they were advised to go to the Hospital with the least wait time as all the Hospitals would be able to bring up the records. We headed to South Health Campus, they had a 3 hour wait and Foothills had a 5 hour wait time. It didn’t really matter as it took 8 hours before my friend would see the Doctor. In the meantime, I had gone up to Triage several times to see if they could give me any idea as to when my friend would see the Doctor. It was explained to me that patients are placed in categories, one to five, one being you’re coding, my friend was next on the list, category two. We continued to see patients going ahead that did not appear to be ill or in pain.

While standing in line again to speak to someone in Triage, I observed multiple adults laughing and joking and children playing that I felt did not need Emergency care. This made me infuriated and I wanted to scream at them, as I wondered what they were doing here in Emergency. I understand you cannot judge how a person is really feeling, but perhaps the definition of ‘Emergency’ should be noted for all and could be provided in several different languages.

Once my friend finally saw the Doctor, they began running several tests. At one point, the Doctor advised my friend would be sent home with some pain pills and a prescription which could be filled the next day as it was getting close to midnight. Just as we were getting ready to leave, the Doctor came back and advised they were concerned about my friend’s elevated heart rate and decided it would be best if my friend stayed so they could monitor them. It was shortly after midnight and the Doctor suggested I leave and return later as there wasn’t anything I could do there.

When visiting my friend who was placed in the Rapid Access Unit, I learned this was a temporary location that was put together during COVID and was a short stay medical unit that treats people with non-critical acute medical illness from the Emergency department. The bed provided was a stretcher. My friend was separated from other patients by a curtain. In my opinion, my friend should have been placed somewhere more comfortable. My friend was told they had an infection in their abdominal area and it was going to be treated with intravenous anti-biotics. This went on for 4 days. On that 4th day, I told the staff that my friend needed to be in a bed, not a stretcher. From my point of view, this was completely ludicrous seeing my friend was a Stage 4, terminal Cancer Patient. I then left and found out soon after, my friend was moved to a makeshift room still located in the Rapid Access Unit just down the aisle from where they originally were. This gave me little comfort in a very frustrating situation.