Ottawa to review Indigenous health care after misdiagnosis, death of cancer patient – The Globe and Mail
November 27, 2017
When Keith Wynne arrived at the nursing station on the Kashechewan First Nation on July 17 complaining of back pain, the nurses sent him home with Tylenol and Advil. They didn’t help.
Over the following month, the 29-year-old made five trips to the same Northwestern Ontario medical facility and reported the same symptoms. Each appointment resulted in an offer of painkillers. On the fifth visit, his mother, Jane, demanded that her son be given a blood test.
The nurses called the next day, Ms. Wynne said in an interview after recounting the story to a conference on Indigenous health care in Timmins, Ont., this month. The tests showed something was wrong. Keith was evacuated to Moose Factory and then to a hospital in Kingston, where, on Aug. 30, he was diagnosed with leukemia. He died on Oct. 6.
