EDITOR;
On the evening of July 31, 2010, we took our son to the ER at the Taber Health Centre  after he experienced sudden numbness and a total lack of control in his right leg. He told the nurses, “I’ve had a stroke.”
She wasn’t at all concerned. While waiting, he began having severe back and stomach pain, which crept up into his chest, a symptom of aortic aneurysm. After waiting 50 minutes, he was seen by a doctor who looked in his eyes, checked his hands and legs for strength (his right leg had no strength) and gave the advice, “Go home and take an Advil.”
It was a long weekend, and we were treated as if we were an inconvenience the doctor and nurses wanted to go away.
After us waiting for nearly another one-and-a-half hours, when nothing was done for him, we applied pressure to the doctor, who finally consulted a neurologist at the Chinook  Regional Hospital in Lethbridge, who said, “Most likely he’s had a stroke.”
Only then was he taken to the CRH by ambulance, where a cat scan confirmed he’d had a stroke. He was given an Aspirin.
Never once did any of the medical personnel show any concern for the extreme pain he was having, No one listened to him.
Nearly 10 hours after his first symptoms that something was seriously wrong, he went into cardiac arrest. Previously, he had been a healthy, active young man.
An autopsy showed he’d also had an aortic aneurysm. Perhaps he couldn’t have been saved, but no one even tried.
Is this what you’d call good health care?

MIKE AND MARION SEKURA
Taber