It’s a sad irony that a man as quiet and private as Danny Komarechka spent his dying hours in public in the hectic emergency department at Health Sciences North.
Nurses, doctors and other hospital personnel worked frantically the morning of Feb. 15 to find a room, even an out-of-the-way spot, where the 51-year-old auto mechanic could die in peace.
Instead, Danny spent five of his last seven hours in a hallway in the ER before being moved to an examination room where he died two hours later.
Kimberly Komarechka knew when her brother was brought by ambulance to Ramsey Lake Health Centre last week he would likely not be coming home. Danny’s mother, Janet, was hanging on to the hope her son would.
Danny was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in October, told it was terminal and that he had three to six months to live. Janet had noticed her son having difficulty swallowing food at the regular Sunday family dinners he never missed. A man who was rarely sick, Danny sought medical advice and received the deadly diagnosis. Janet stood in her kitchen and sobbed when Danny broke the terrible news to her.
It was a running gag in the Komarechka family that Danny was his mother’s favourite. Kimberly joked about it in a conversation this week at a New Sudbury coffee shop.
Kimberly had to think hard about whether she should go public and talk about her family’s experience, given Danny was known for keeping to himself.
A quiet-spoken single father who raised his son Andrew, now 29, on his own, Danny shared a special bond with his mother.
Said Janet: “He’d call me up in the morning and say, ‘Can you do lunch?’” She would get busy and make his favourite, egg salad sandwiches.
It was not unusual for Janet to get up in the morning, go to the kitchen and find a fragrant bouquet of lilacs Danny had picked and dropped off on his way to work at OK Tire, said Kimberly.
“He was a good son,” said Janet.
Danny spent his last weeks at his parents’ home. Last week, when Danny was restless, incoherent and could not get comfortable, the family called an ambulance.
Danny arrived at HSN’s emergency department at 8:20 a.m., was immediately triaged and quickly placed in a hallway in the ED. As he lay there, declining quickly, Kimberly said paramedics cared for Danny, monitoring his blood pressure and vitals. Kimberly could hardly walk through the hallway. There were “stretchers everywhere,” and doctors and nurses were weaving in between them.
As Danny quickly declined, family members were texting Kimberly, asking if they could be there for his last moments. There was no room for them.
Over and over again, Kimberly and Janet praised medical personnel who kept checking with them and trying to find a private spot for the family. About 1 p.m., Danny was placed in an examination room across from the nursing station.
Danny’s loved ones don’t blame hospital employees for the situation. “Not even a little bit,” said Kimberly. She heard the urgency in the voices of doctors and nurses trying to find Danny a bed.
When he was placed in the examination room, the rest of the small Komarechka family was able to gather and be at Danny’s side.
Throughout the ordeal, Kimberly said her father Harold kept repeating: “ ‘This is not dying with dignity. This is not dying with dignity.’ He just kept saying it over and over, (and) it was heart-breaking. He’s still saying it.”
Kimberly went on what she called a rant on Facebook after her brother died, describing her family’s experience. She is “outraged and concerned” that HSN has had to lay off employees and doesn’t have enough beds, especially during the busy flu season.
An assistant to the president and executive at United Steelworkers Local 6500, Kimberly says of health-care planners and leaders: “Don’t they see what’s going on? Are they blind to it? Do they not care? The health of our citizens should come first.”
The over-crowding in the emergency department at HSN’s Ramsey Lake Health Centre is “way beyond my comprehension,” said Kimberly.
Mark Hartman, HSN’s senior vice-president of patient experience and digital transformation, said, since Christmas, the hospital has been dealing with some of the highest occupancy rates it has ever had. The last four weeks have been especially taxing.
At one point last week, 40 patients were admitted to emergency and waiting for a hospital bed in an ED designed with 36 “spots” while dozens and dozens more poured into the department that handles an average 200 people a day.
At the same time, more than 40 other patients had been admitted and placed in “unconventional” spaces such as television and visitors’ lounges and linen rooms. HSH has six palliative care beds on the fourth floor of the North Tower as well as a visitors’ room. It was already occupied with a patient for whom there was no other bed.
The high occupancy rate puts an incredible strain on every part of the operation, said Hartman, forcing the placement of patients in unconventional spaces. “I wish that wasn’t the case.
“It’s a terrible experience for patients and their families,” said Hartman, who sympathizes and understands how people would be frustrated and upset with that situation.
Contributing to over-crowding is the high number of alternate level of care patients – more than 100 in recent weeks. Hartman said that means almost 20 per cent of hospital beds are filled with people better suited for a different level of care.
Last week, over-crowding was so bad that HSN managers initiated emergency management procedures that included cancelling scheduled surgeries, turning patients away from other hospitals who weren’t “life or limb situations,” and working with long-term care homes and St. Joseph’s Continuing Care Centre to help with the overflow.
HSN president and chief executive officer Dominic Giroux has spoken in recent weeks about the fact the hospital has too few beds. He and other executives are working on a capital master plan that would remedy that, but it remains to be seen if that will be approved given budget restraints in health care.
Kimberly Komarechka and her mother don’t want to see another family go through the experience they did.
“I wish for the next family ... that they (HSN) at least try to keep some private area free at all times” for dying patients and their families. It doesn’t have to be big, “just away from (the ED) to give the dying person dignity and the families peace to say goodbye.”
For the first few days after her son died, Janet said all she could think of was Danny lying in the hallway, “but now, I am just sort of letting it go.”
Said Kimberly, “It makes you sad that it had to go like this.”
Carol Mulligan is an award-winning reporter and one of Greater Sudbury’s most experienced journalists.
