On Sept. 12, 2010 I came to Southlake with a severely infected foot and blood poisoning that had turned septic which made me delirious. (I have no recollection of the days of Sept. 11 or 12). My wife begged the nurses to clean my foot wound and change the bandage that she had put on the night before. Finally one male nurse walked in after she pleaded with him four times to help us. He took off the bandage and she noticed the hole in my foot was now filled with sock lint and carpet fibre.

He took a piece of gauze and placed it over the dirty hole and fastened it with a piece of tape. My wife couldn’t believe it. She said “shouldn’t you have cleaned that first”? He glared at my wife as if to say “when did you get your medical degree”.

We complained the first day that we had been waiting for five hours for someone to see me and were told that we were lucky that wait times are usually eight hours. I was finally seen after 7 1/2 hours and they gave me a bag of antibiotics by Iv but was told nothing about the wound.

The nurses congregate behind the desk for their social hour and only got up once every hour to see if the emergency room patients were dead yet. Every once in a while a nurse would do the Tim Horton’s run. They went for meals while the emergency room patients starved and if you didn’t have someone to run and get food for you, you were out of luck.

This appeared more political than being actually due to a Doctor or staff shortage. The CEO earns several hundred thousand dollars a year, it cost me $75.00 in hospital parking and I nearly lost my foot and could have lost my life while these guys are trying to make a point.

After the Iv was finished, they told me to come back at 7am the next morning for another bag and to have a bone scan.

A very nice Doctor (Dr. Ganage) was on duty. He was compassionate and after 5 or 6 more hours, he told me that I would be admitted. I finally went to a room on the 6th floor on Tuesday afternoon. I was well enough to be discharged 11 days later.

If it was not for Dr. Ganage and Nurse Nancy the wound care nurse and Dr. Lingley (Infectious disease doctor), I would have lost my foot, leg and probably my life. To them, thank you.

As for your question *Do you have document required to support your case, if required.”, my answer is, I don’t, but the hospital does.

Garry on 11/6/2010