Video Captures Patient Crawling Out of Hospital After Staff Dismiss Pleas for Help

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From CBC: “David Pontone’s voice still shakes as he recalls having to crawl out of Toronto’s Humber River Hospital on his hands and knees.

‘The pain was unbearable,’ said Pontone. ‘To be able to walk properly was impossible.’

It happened on April 18, 2018, but involved a lengthy battle for his family to obtain video footage of the event.

The 45-year-old had gone to emergency, complaining of excruciating pain in his legs.

Pontone also told medical staff he took medication for bipolar affective disorder . . . but that he’d been stable for seven years. He says that disclosure affected his treatment.

‘They thought I was faking it because I was bipolar,’ Pontone told Go Public. ‘There are no words to describe what I went through that night.’

One of Canada’s leading psychiatric experts says overlooking serious physical health issues in people who struggle with mental illness is a widespread problem — and that it can severely shorten their lifespans.

‘We are failing this population miserably,’ said Dr. Vicky Stergiopoulos, psychiatrist and physician-in-chief at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto, Canada’s largest mental health teaching hospital.

‘They go in for a broken leg and get sent to psychiatry to check their head.'”

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11 COMMENTS

  1. Absolutely appalling. But, and not to at all minimize what they did to him as it surely is ghastly, it’s an every day occurrence in Canadian “health care” that someone is badly mistreated or gas lighted about their health issues. And this is not limited to “the mentally ill” either this is across the board at this point. I know a number of people whose loved ones died due to health care here, who were left too long to be seen their problems minimized or outright denied. They were not labeled with psych issues. So sadly this sort of mistreatment is no longer surprising to me. I don’t know how many times I’ve been to a hospital over a serious health issue only to be treated like I’ve made it up. One nurse even had to ask me what my issue was as that’s how knowledge she was about the condition I have, then proceeded to treat me like I was exaggerating how bad it was. Apparently she became an expert in the problem in two seconds lol. You really can’t make this stuff up…

    And as if I don’t have better things to do than sit in a crowded waiting room where I could pick up some contagious illness!!!

    Anyway good on this man and his family for pursuing the issue. I hope he understands that he’s far from alone, and there are good people out there who think what they did to him is disgusting!

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  2. “An ambulance took him to Toronto Western Hospital in downtown Toronto, where a neurologist diagnosed Guillain-BarrĂŠ Syndrome, a rare disorder in which the body’s immune system attacks the nerves. ”

    I’m nearly sure that some psychiatric drugs cause this condition. So sad.

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  3. Of Lyme Disease, Avril Lavigne said, “They treat you like you’re crazy.” Unfortunately, the current situation with Covid has made hospital visits for other issues fruitless as well. Once they rule out Covid, they send you home, regardless of how emergent your symptoms appear.

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  5. “They go in for a broken leg and get sent to psychiatry to check their head.” And if you’ve had the misfortune of dealing with a “bad fix” on a broken leg bone, you’re misdiagnosed and defamed as “bipolar.”

    It’s all about the money, and psychiatry represents the kings and queens of attempting to murder innocent people, to cover up malpractice and child abuse.

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  6. The nurse is a reflection of what actually happened beforehand from the doctor’s treatment. They did the “protocol” examination and proceeded to tell the nurse on the charts that it’s his “bi-polar”. So in fact, the doctors are the asses and she gets to act out her psychopathic traits. She doesn’t even realize that perhaps the docs are the issue in turning her into an asshole. That possibly she is working for a system that breeds this garbage. So I hope she talks to someone, hope she sees what she did and works for helping people, not minimizing and abusing along with her superiors. Her superiors are the gas lighters, but she’s probably too stupid to see it.

    It goes on multiple times per day. All day, every day. Not having had much to do with running to doctors or hospitals and two such visits being minimized until they led to life saving rapid surgeries.

    So too bad for them and clients because in fact, their reliance on psych and self protection has led to a complete stall in science and even in discovery of complexities of disease or it’s effects. They make people believe that the same disease in 50 people does the same thing, and the rest is “psychological”, or “mental”. NOTHING could be further from the truth. It is their reliance of MRI, on pharma and their lawyers, also being overworked with loads of seniors or aging, that has led to them hating their jobs. Always at the ready for a fight because patients are more informed.
    So they take their issues out on patients. If a doc is frustrated, the patient will be the first to find out.

    And we can see where shitty treatment has led us to.

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