News & Events
Family suffers, Health Sciences Centre won't give answers
April 19, 2010
Dylan Campbell's parents once ran a successful taxi business that served seven Indigenous communities. Today they are collecting welfare and spending their days living in Winnipeg, going to the Health Sciences Centre so they can be with their 12-year-old son who lays in bed in a vegetative state.
Dylan's condition can be linked to horrifying mistakes or negligence that occurred at the HSC Children's Hospital in early December.
His parents Jerry and Sandra Campbell brought him back to the hospital a few days after he had been sent home following tonsil and adenoid operations. He was operated on Nov. 27 and sent home the next day with a letter that it was important that he be brought back to the Children's Hospital immediately if he started to bleed.
The Campbells bought Dylan back to the hospital overnight Dec. 2. The Campbells tell of how response at the hospital was very, very slow and valuable time was lost. Jerry started hollering to get attention for Dylan, who was having a hard time breathing. A nurse called security and Jerry was removed from triage though the emergency doors.
The problems at the hospital that evening have been compounded by the attitude of the HSC administration since then. An investigation into the incident was not only inadequate; it was an insult to the family.
On April 14, the Critical Incident Review Committee report was released at a boardroom in HSC. Attending were HSC officials, Dylan's parents, personal supporters, and Indigenous representatives including SCO Grand Chief Morris Swan Shannacappo. Jerry and Sandra had been waiting more than four months to get answers to their questions about what went wrong.
The report was a huge disappointment.
Very little information was given in terms of answers or explanations. It was obvious that the HSC was protecting itself. HSC officials wanted to show there had been an investigation, but they didn't want to give out information that would increase HSC's legal and political liability.
The report itself was kept secret; HSC just released a one and one-half page summary of findings and recommendations. Even that sparse account was badly flawed. The information provided to the investigator by Jerry and Sandra was left out of the summary.
During questioning at the April 14 meeting, no answer was given as to why their account of the incident wasn't even acknowledged. HSC representatives also didn't explain why another version of events was accepted as true.
We assume the description that was accepted was given by the hospital and medical personnel, the same people who were responsible for the situation being mishandled in the first place. However, even that is uncertain because no explanation was given or evidence provided. We are left to speculate.
"This whole exercise was a waste of time. It is the same as the problems we get when police investigate themselves when one of their own commits a crime. The only difference is that the cops are better at cover-ups. The investigation at the Health Sciences looked really lame," Swan Shannacappo said later.
By keeping things secret, HSC's actions contradicted a promise made by Manitoba Health Minister Theresa Oswald April 12 in a letter sent to the Campbells. The letter stated:
"Any new facts discovered during the investigation will also be shared with your family. The Winnipeg Children's Hospital does not want any family member to bear an additional burden of not being fully informed."
Fully informed!
HSC didn't answer any of the Campbell's key questions. During the April 14 meeting, HSC officials did not even provide information about how the study was conducted: whether investigators used strategies to prevent collusion among hospital personnel. Did the people, whose actions were being investigated, have an opportunity to talk to each another - to get their stories straight - prior to individual interviews? HSC officials were unable - or unwilling - to answer basic questions about how the study was conducted.
Jerry and Sandra have been suffering in ways that no parent should ever have to suffer, but HSC has treated them as if they are a threat. It has been acting like a corporation that is preoccupied with its own liability and reputation.
Jerry Campbell is from Duck Bay and Sandra is a member of Pine Creek First Nation. They are now in Winnipeg with their 17-year-old son Garrett. The parents spend hours daily at their son's room on the Fourth Floor of the Children's Hospital.
They have been told that he will likely remain in a vegetative state, mostly unconscious and fed by tube. Two Teddy Bears have been placed in his arms. His parents talk to him, touch him and kiss him.
The Campbells say that a representative of the Children's Hospital wants to meet and discuss having Dylan moved from the hospital. They have been told Dylan can't stay there indefinitely and that he will have to either go home or to a place where he can be taken care of.
There are photographs of Dylan on a shelf above his bed. One shows him in is graduation outfit from Kindergarten. Another shows him graduating from Grade 3. In a lot of his pictures he is grinning - a wide-bright-eyed smile.
"He was always smiling - teasing people...He always wanted to make people laugh. He would make faces...He liked to be around people," Jerry says, his own voice is tender.
He is even smiling in a picture taken when he was only one-year-old, but looks older and grown up for that age. That photo and a graduation photo are on home-made poster carried by his mother. On the poster there is a marvelous poem that Sandra has written. She had been keeping it as a secret between herself and Dylan, but then Jerry found it one day recently and had it printed. It goes:
To My Dearest Son Dylan
Everyday as I sit down in silence looking at you laying on the hospital bed, my eyes filled with tears and heart aches thinking about you.
I spend my days and nights crying, time after time I spend my day lying, saying that I was fine. But my thoughts and feelings, no one will ever know how I feel or they will never be able to understand. I'm trying my best to be strong but it breaks my heart to see you in that condition, seeing you every single day, my heart was crushed inside and that day I felt like a little bit of me died.
When I didn't think I could make it another day, you gave me strength to get up and go again and again, even though I was so exhausted
Ever single day and every night that you were always on my mind, wishing that you were at home already because I miss you a lot.
But one thing I promise you that I will always be by your side each and every day and I'll never stop loving you, Dylan Campbell.
My feelings for you will never change and I will always love you with all my heart and you will always hold a special place in my heart.