An Alberta man wanted MAID. Instead, he died in a Catholic hospital, waiting to be transferred
CBC
It’s September, and Stacey Hume is next to her dad’s hospital bed in the palliative ward of Edmonton’s Grey Nuns Community Hospital. She, along with her mom and sister, are told by staff that they need to make a choice about her dad.
Either contend with him possibly dying at a red light, alone in the ambulance, or remain in the hospital, where "it could be three, four or five more days of him hanging on like this," recalled Hume.
Her dad, William Hume, was dying. He had been diagnosed with late-stage gastroesophageal cancer just a few months earlier. William wanted MAID, and was assessed and approved soon after he was diagnosed.
But the procedure is prohibited at Grey Nuns, where William was admitted, as it was the only Edmonton hospital with an ER bed available. The hospital is operated by Covenant Health — a publicly funded, Catholic health-care provider in Alberta — which does not allow MAID to be administered at any of its sites. William would have to be transferred to another facility.
Faith-based health-care providers are allowed to have policies prohibiting MAID. That means patients who want an assisted death, like Hume, need to be transferred to another facility that allows the procedure, in what are called forced transfers.
In the end, the family didn’t make the decision for him. He passed away in hospital that afternoon of Sept. 5, six hours before his 6:30 p.m. appointment for MAID. He was 79.
“My dad would be horrified to find out that he went to a faith-based place and his final wishes were dictated by a religion that he didn't even believe in,” Stacey told Dr. Brian Goldman, host of CBC’s White Coat, Black Art.
William's terminal cancer diagnosis came as a surprise both to him and his family.
“I think my dad honestly thought he was going to live until he was 100,” Stacey said.
Staying physically fit and healthy was important to William, according to his daughters. He loved to golf, sometimes golfing twice a day.
After coming home from Palm Springs, Calif., in April, William noticed a tickle in his throat when he swallowed.
They didn’t think much of it at the time, Stacey says. He was sent for a barium swallow test, an endoscopy, and a PET scan.
While camping, Stacey would be the one to read the test results online. Her dad had Stage 4 esophageal cancer.
She packed up the car and drove back to Edmonton to tell him the news.
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