Prince George's Serial Killer

 It is 3:AM, fell asleep about 12'ish, wide awake, and my mind will not shut off. 

  I am beginning the first of what will likely be a long series of life lessons I need to share with the world.My family has been put in the position no one ever wants to be in, again!!It is a position , like many folks, as well as ourselves, generally attempt to keep private, well usually among loved friends and family.That was our decision in the beginning, however, it is such a horrid position, I can no longer keep it quiet. Perhaps, keeping it quiet is the reason it has continued and grows progressively bigger? If so, maybe my words will make a tiny difference, and maybe someone who can make a difference will read these words, Lord make it so!

  Earlier this year, I lost a dear friend, my sister-in-law of over 4 decades. My brother's wife, my nephew's mother, their children's grandmother, and a beloved friend to us lucky ones. What a cluster F--- her journey was with the dreaded disease Cancer. She was a far nicer person than myself, she started out thinking she was in good hands, with the Prince George Cancer Clinic, little did she know, she was just a name and number to them, and clearly her life simply went into a slot that she had to accept the treatment she was given without question. Yes, folks, this lesson is one learned immediately upon entering the hallowed halls of this Center, DO NOT QUESTION, you are in a system, and you must be silent, and follow the directions. She accepted the "new and improved" ZOOM system. I need to explain what this is, as it may work with business meetings, and school work, but keep in mind, we are talking about Cancer. This sytem was set up to help those of us in the north, save on travel, every once in awhile the center would set up a meeting, in which the patient would likely go to a room in a hospital with a computer, sit down, and have a virtual "meeting" with her medical Onocologist (the person in charge of trying to cure the cancer). I put the word meeting in quotation marks because these were not meetings, they were basically the Onocologist speaking her words, and no questions answered. Every time my sister-in-law had a Zoom meeting she would spend days upset, because she was not heard, and made to feel foolish if she asked anything, each time she would be told something totally different than the last meeting, but..when she questioned she was told the previous statements were not made, easy with a Zoom meeting, right? So, because she agreed to the Zoom, she was basically stuck as a third party person. The hospital she had treatment at, was the closest larger hospital to her home ( 3.5 hr drive on a fairly isolated highway) so, the Onocologist at the Prince George Cancer Clinic would get test results from the Terrace Hospital, and make her decisions with what she saw. Then she would contact the staff in Terrace, and tell them what levels of Chemo, and how many treatments and how often. Do you see how problems may occur?Don't you think that the person involved with filling you full of poisin should perhaps be involved just a little more? I ask that, because..my sister-in-law lost her battle, because she was given too much chemo and it burned her grey matter. Yep, so much chemo that her brain cells began to die, and the prognosis was , they would continue to die and not come back because she had been burned. O.K. there is likely a better medical explanation, but this is what we gleaned from what we were told. Would that have happened if the Onocologist had been keeping tabs on her patient? What are patient files for? Do they actually read the file, or just some highlighted areas (I ask this, because when I begin our story, it will become clear they do NOT read files). So patient lost, wife lost, mother lost, grandmother lost, and friend lost, because clearly someone did not do their job properly! Now, one has to ask, do you think the loss of a scheduled ZOOM meeting made a lick of difference to the person who was suppose to try and save or at least prolong my sister-in-law's life ? My take on these ZOOM meetings, is, would you rather try and come up with the money to actually have a person to person meeting with someone who is suppose to attempt to save you, or save a couple of bucks, and talk to a screen? Ultimately I think perhaps, and it is a small perhaps, they would feel a little more human if they had to look one in the eyes, and maybe they would be just a little more responsible , again, this is a small maybe. 

  So now I take the leap, and put something extremely personal out for all to hear. First let me say, those near and dear to us know this already, and it was suppose to remain with them, maybe making it public will allow them to talk openly with their friends for some support through this nightmare, but it is far too important and far too awful to not hold those doing a very shoddy job to the fire.

  Last month, my beloved started having difficulty swallowing. He found he would have to drink fluids while eating to help the food go down. He knew something was up, but trying to get an appointment after his family Dr. left town was a pain in the butt so he let it go for a few weeks. Over 7 WEEKS ago while having supper at home, he suddenly could not swallow, not even his own spit. Thankfully he could breath fine, the food and fluid just came right back up. Off to ER, he was lucky Dr. Kim was on duty. She checked him over and decided he needed a scoping, and that was done in Terrace. Our youngest drove him out and the surgeon called me to tell me he was in surgery so it was going to be awhile before he could do the scoping. That was done early the next morning. I drove out to pick him up, and while on the road got a call from the surgeon's nurse asking when I would arrive, because the surgeon wanted to speak with both of us. You know that is not a good sign, right? When I arrived my honey was all ready to get dressed and come home, but again, we were told to just wait until Dr. Youssef spoke with us. I think we knew then it was not good. Our son and his girlfriend had stopped by while we waited and came in to hear the Dr. speak. It was not good at all. He had a huge tumour in his esophogus, the Dr. said he would lay money on the fact it was cancer, from the pictures he took while scoping. He spoke of possible thorastic surgery to remove after radiation treatment, all the time treating us gently, and answering all the questions we had. Hearing news like this is never easy, however Dr. Youssef made us feel like he was there for us,and promised to call when the biopsy came back. He did, it was indeed Cancer, in fact mestastic cancer, as it appears to have spread to some nodes, and the liver.Scary, right? But again, this Dr. promised to be there , and offered my honey the ability to call him any time he wanted to talk. So...He sent the file off to the Cancer Center in Vancouver marked URGENT. He told us to wait 3 days for them to call and to call him back if we didn't hear anything by the Monday. Monday, comes, Tuesday comes, Wednesday comes, this has been over a week. So I make my man call the Cancer Center in Vancouver. Surprise!! They sent it off to Prince George Cancer Center, and I will say, Chuck spoke out loud the words to the person on the phone, "Oh great, the place where people go to die!" They gave us the number,and we started to call, getting voice mail time and again. I tried calling later, and lo and behold a very nice lady answered. I gave her the information, she checked, sure enough his file had arrived 2 days ago. So..my question was, when will we be contacted. She told me I would hear from her the begining of the next week, Again, Monday comes, Tueday comes,no call back keep in mind this file has been marked URGENT, keep in mind we are very anxious to get things moving to fight this battle, it is on your mind 24-7, your world has now flipped and everything is going to be different for a long period. On wednesday, I called back, the nice lady answered. I explained that I was sorry but hope she understood the stress, and she did, then I asked the question,"what is happening with his case?" I could not believe what the answer was, apparently his file had NOT been looked at by anyone!!! I was shocked, I told her I knew it was marked URGENT, it could enlarge a little more and he would not be able to eat or drink. I will say I was a bit pissy, but cripes, WTF?? She said she would email the Dr. again. I also informed her that we would NOT be doing ZOOM meetings, we would travel to meet face to face, we were NOT going to have a third party treatment plan.Fast forwards, we are now into 6 weeks. Dr. Youssef calls us, he has been on the phone with the Cancer care team in PG and they have come up with a plan that has Chuck getting a feeding tube inserted (just in case) and the nice lady calls as well to say he will be booked in a week after the tube is done. Again, bless his heart, Dr. Youssf books Chuck in on that Saturday and puts the tube in. We wait the week, nothing, two weeks later, he gets a call for a consultation meeting with a Dr, Parma...O.K. some of you know me, Off to google I go, because after this call, we actually had ameeting with Dr.. Youssef at our local hospital, and I mentioned the Drs.name, he had not heard that name, his contact was a totally different radiation Onocologist.He also was shocked that Chuck was NOT in PG the week after he had inserted the feeding tube. I found her name, she has been in practise in Canada for some time, so...O.K. The appointment in PG was for 8:15 in the morning, so since it was snowing, we knew we needed to go the day before to make that early appointment. Did I forget to mention, we have 3 dogs, 5 cattle, and a shit ton of chickens etc? So our youngest worked from home and took care of the snimals, and we packed for the Friday appointment. Thursday afternoon he gets a call from the center informing him he had an appointment for radiation mapping Monday afternoon! O.K. folks, we go for a Friday, on a Thursday, and now we have to be there on a Monday. It is a 5 hr. drive from here to PG, so we now have to go on a Sunday, yes today, so we can make the appointment on Monday..Hummm..So, lets talk about this "consultation" Again, yes, quotation marks.8AM we are at the Cancer Center, I have my book with me, because I am keeping notes on all of this. We were told it would be a 2 hr. consultation, so we assumed we would find out what we had ahead of us. The first hour was sitting with a nurse who took a full medical history, height, weight, BP etc. He had to tell her what meds he was on, what vitamins he was taking ( I read up on T-cell boosters, so he has been taking Vitamin C Vitamin D, Zinc, Elderberry and echinacea) oops, going to have to cut out those vitamins because there is no study on how they will affect radiation.Questions such as have you been anxious, depressed, concerned about finances, etc. he told of all his medical history, such as his sub dermal bleed, and breaking his back into 34 pieces . I need to put this down, because you will begin to see why I know files are NOT read. Then comes the question "what do you identify as?" Huh????? I said First Nations, because now forms often have that on them..Oh no..she means what are his pronouns!! Really and truly folks, when a human being is dealing with Cancer, do you think they would be offended if you didn't call them "they" "it" "kitty"? he just told the nurse I think that business is stupid, so end ot that section of "consultation". Finally the Dr. comes in. She has two pieces of paper with her, and begins. This is were it starts to scare me, not because of the Cancer, but because of the lack of history. She tells us he has cancer stage 4 (when it has spread) it is in some of his nodes, his liver, of course his esophogus, AND..in his spine! WHAT!! This is news to us, Holy Crap! Threw us both for a loop, she explained from the CAT scan photos she had, that she would be doing the radiation from the point of the tumour in his esophogus to his spine. HOLA, that is a pretty large area. Somewhere in this conversation he mentions that he takes CBD for the pain in his back.She asks what that is from, and he states as he has stated many times on his file, he broke his back years ago. "OH!" she says, that is good news for her, as fractures show the same as Cancer with the scans!! WTF!!! Again, what if he had not mentioned that during the conversation. Oh it gets better..(worse) We get onto the feeding tube, he mentions how he has lost a fair bit of weight. "Ah: you are not getting enough nutrition through your feeding tube" O.K. seriously worried now. The feeding tube has not been used, we simply keep it clear in case the radiation causes the tumour to enlarge in the beginning. I also understood my sister-in-laws issue with questions ..because I did ask some, and..I was told that I need to let her continue on her line of thought till she was finished. WTF??? She could not tell us anything really, as she was just the radiation Onocologist, and we would have to wait until that part of things was done, before he could speak to the medical team. During our conversation, she mentioned that her department was down to 1/2 staff. They had the machines, but not the technicians. Folks, I know this is an issue in all hospitals, but due to the seriousness of this disease, either this center finds a way to ensure the people of Northern British Columbia have a chance to be cured, they either need to send people elsewhere that can indeed do the work quickly, or not play waiting games with their lives. She admitted she was the reason we had to wait longer than the week promised. She felt she needed to allow him to heal after the feeding tube, so he could lay still for the mapping. Again WTF! healing time was 2 days, but she made us wait, could someone have perhaps called to see how he was doing and make the decision based on fact? So..he goes for mapping romorrow, then there is around a weeks wait while it is all set up, O.K. by the time he gets into treatement we will be 11 weeks with a cancer classed as URGENT!!You tell me is that acceptable, would you want your loved one waiting that amount of time? The center itself is beautiful, however buildings do not provide diddly when someone is battling Cancer, we deserve fast effective treatment, like former provincial Premier John Horgan, s*it his treatment moved along far faster than what we are dealing with. Again, if this center cannot do it job efficiently, send people somewhere that will! This is not a hernia, or knee surgery, that folks have to bear pain for long periods, this is CANCER it doesn't stop on it's own, you simply cannot and should not have to wait 11 weeks to begin treatment. I have heard folks speak of the delays that become deadly, we don't care if we have to sell everything we own to pay to travel somewhere decent, but at this point we are in British Columbia, and we are at the mercy of the sh*tshow we are offered . Just take a moment to imagine waiting 11 weeks , and clearly longer, because as she explained to us, she will do 10 radiation treatments, which they do not do any tests during the two weeks, and then he will have to take a couple of weeks for inflamation to settle, and then he will finally , maybe, actually meet with the medical team who will inform us what the next steps will be, Oh and we were also informed no treatments on long weekends or holidays,lol, plus she would be leaving the center, maybe even before he is done his treatments. Yes, feeling pretty confident this is someone who gives a sh*t!

  I am going to keep spewing this nightmare as we travel through it. We just cannot keep this cluster F@ck to ourselves, because this can happen to anyone, you will live in limbo like we are, trying to keep faith in a system that is so very flawed it is criminal. Cancer is not a fair player, and sadly the loss earlier this year weighs very heavy on all of us, making this just that much harder. Someone or someones have to be held responsible for gambling with peoples lives, because that is what they are doing, I have to wonder what we would be going through if the files was not marked URGENT!!

  To be continued........