2023-06-02 04:00:00
“I feel like I’m living in a horror movie.” That’s what Quebec screenwriter Marie Vien told me yesterday.
The one who laid down the screenplays for the films Arlette, Augustine’s passion, 14 days 12 nights, is currently living a waking nightmare. Or rather his sister Dominique, 67, in the terminal phase of early Alzheimer’s, saw a horror film in a CHSLD… not air-conditioned.
Yes, you read that right: in 2023, in Quebec, in the middle of a heat wave, Dominique Vien does not even have the right to a fan, air conditioning or a cool shower.
THE QUEBEC MODEL?
If Marie Vien wrote this story in one of these scripts, the producers would say to her: “Come on, Marie, you’re exaggerating, it’s a caricature!” No one will believe that we treat sick people like this in our beautiful Quebec! »
On Wednesday, Marie went to her sister’s bedside at the CHSLD Vigi Reine-Elizabeth in Montreal. She found Dominique in childbirth, in her bed. Marie took a picture of the thermostat. It was 30 degrees in the room. On the other hand, the director’s office is air-conditioned.
Yesterday on QUB radio, Marie Vien told me about the Kafkaesque journey she had to go through to obtain basic care for her sister who is at the end of her life.
Photo provided by the family
Dominica Vienna
When she asked what had been done to refresh the residents, Marie Vien was told that the recreation department had come to give out ice cream!
When she asked why her sister hadn’t been given a shower, she was told it was “not her day.”
According to the bureaucratic care schedule, Dominique was not entitled to a shower that day. Even if Quebec is in a heat wave. Even though it’s 30 degrees in her room.
When the civil servants, in their air-conditioned offices in Quebec, tell you that one room per CHSLD is air-conditioned so that the residents go there to find freshness, think of Dominique: she cannot leave her room. She’s in too bad shape. Prisoner of her overheated room.
This is how we treat vulnerable people in Quebec in 2023.
In November 2021, I interviewed Marie Vien on QUB radio. She had told me about another scandal. The CHSLD had installed plywood to block the bottom of her sister’s door, to prevent residents from leaving.
“She has been confined to this room for more than 10 days and she has several more days to come, Marie Vien told me.
She eats alone, morning, noon, evening. She is washed in a basin, she is not allowed to go to the shower. We don’t wash her hair, I washed her hair in a sink. His health and memory have completely failed. »
INHUMAN TREATMENT
For two years now, Marie has been fighting to have her sister’s (and other residents’) room air-conditioned.
At her wit’s end, Mary went to the Canadian Tire yesterday to buy some portable air conditioning units with her own money to cool her sister down.
Can you imagine if you went to the cinema and saw this scene on the screen? You wouldn’t believe your eyes.
But at least you would be in a room… with air conditioning.
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#CHSLD #horror #film