Since the day she was born, Judy Peter couldn’t speak due to brain damage.
But that didn’t slow her down. The 35-year-old was active, highly intellectual and otherwise healthy. She even competed as an athlete in the B.C. Special Olympics.
“She was the light of my life,” her mother Sheeli De Silva said. “Without a word, she touched so many hearts.”
She did, however, have a history of gall stones, which previous doctors had diagnosed.
So it made De Silva even angrier that her daughter died on Sunday morning, just hours after she was discharged from Vancouver General Hospital (VGH), where doctors told her everything was fine.
“They didn’t pay attention,” De Silva, who’s a registered nurse, said about how doctors responded when she told them about Judy’s gall stones.
Coverage of Vancouver General Hospital (VGH) on Globalnews.ca:
“He told me not to worry. He said there are no symptoms for that. He said she’ll be okay. He told me to give her a Gravol… and take her home.”
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Judy was brushing her teeth in their Surrey home when she started vomiting on Saturday morning, De Silva said.
She took her daughter to VGH around noon, worried that she was suffering from gall stones again.
She said Judy was dehydrated and that her blood pressure was high.
During the nearly 12 hours Judy spent in hospital, doctors administered numerous tests on her blood and vitals that all came back clean.
Judy was discharged late Saturday night.
Her breathing was shallow when she woke up the next morning. De Silva called 911.
Although Judy was still conscious by the time paramedics arrived, she died minutes later from cardiac arrest.
De Silva said the gall stones were responsible for her daughter’s high blood pressure and cardiac arrest, even though doctors who had treated Judy in the past had said elective surgery could wait.
But she also said that B.C.’s health care system played a major role.
“I feel like quality care is supposed to be patient-focused,” De Silva said. “What I feel is it’s budget-focused.”
She said emergency rooms are increasingly being run this way, and are sending patients away at the earliest sign that they could go home.
De Silva has requested an autopsy to determine what caused the cardiac arrest, hoping to prove her theories. She’s also contacted Vancouver Coastal Health’s Patient Care Quality Office, which is conducting an investigation into her concerns.
In a statement, Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) extended condolences to De Silva and her family, and said they are committed to conducting reviews of the case once all the facts are known.
“We expect our system to always provide the highest quality of care for all of our patients,” the statement read. “So we find the family’s account of the care and treatment this woman received in the VGH emergency department to be concerning.”
B.C.’s Ministry of Health said in its own statement that it will use the findings of the review to improve the care patients receive in emergency departments.
“The death of a loved one is always tragic, and we offer our deep condolences to this family,” the statement read. “We must do better in providing appropriate and adequate emergency care to all British Columbians.”
Neither Vancouver Coastal Health nor the ministry were available to talk to Global News in person.
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