For the Holthoff family, a trip to the emergency room at Cumberland Regional Health Center on New Year’s Eve turned into a nightmare.
Gunter Holthoff of Tydnish, North Carolina, said his wife Alison started feeling sick the morning of Dec. 31, but thought she just had an upset stomach. When it worsened throughout the morning, Holthoff drove his wife to the nearest emergency room in Amherst, North Carolina, around 11 a.m.
Holthoff said he carried Alison to the hospital on his back.
“She was clearly in pain,” he said in an interview with CBC News on Sunday. “I was wheeling her around in the wheelchair and she could barely sit up.
The two waited more than six hours in the emergency room waiting room and then in a ward room as Alison’s pain worsened. Holthoff said it was after 6 p.m. before they went to a doctor and Alison received any treatment.
By then, he said, it was too late.
Allison died while awaiting care at Cumberland Regional Health Center on New Year’s Eve. (Google Street View)
How the tragedy unfolded
After being triaged, Holthoff recalled, the nurses asked for a urine sample. When he took Alison to the bathroom, he couldn’t support her on her own and she fell to the floor.
“I couldn’t pick her up by myself, so I went outside the door and just asked for help,” Holthoff said. Two security guards had to help her.
When Holthoff took Alison back to the waiting room, he said she could no longer sit in the hospital-provided wheelchair because of the pain she was experiencing, so she ended up lying on the floor.
“I told the nurses and the lady at the counter several times, ‘It’s getting worse,’ and nothing happened,” he said. “So the guards after a while brought some blankets and brought us a glass of water and I used it to put some ice on her lips.”
As time passed, Alison told her husband that she felt like she was dying. He approached the sisters a few more times.
Around 3 p.m., the couple was taken to a room with a bed but no medical equipment. Holthoff said she had to help Alison use the nightstand and use a paper towel from a roll on the wall to clean up.
“At one point there she was getting worse and started screaming in pain,” he said.
A nurse came in and rechecked Alison’s blood pressure and saw it was alarmingly low. Holthoff said that’s when things started to change and care became more urgent.
When they finally went to the doctor, they still hadn’t received any test results. Afterward, as nurses prepared Allison for an X-ray, Holthoff said he watched her condition worsen — she was in so much pain that she couldn’t breathe. He tried to comfort her and assured her that the doctors would find out what was causing her pain.
“The next thing is [her] her eyes rolled back in her head and her chest began to heave. Something started beeping,” he said. “The next thing you hear is over the PA, ‘code blue, code blue on x-ray’.”
Holthoff said the room flooded with people as he was sent down the hall. A doctor later told him they had resuscitated Alison three times – to no avail.
“Even if she would have survived at that point … she had too long without adequate blood flow to the brain and vital organs. It would not have been a life worth living,” he said.
Alison was involved in her community and was Deputy Chief and Treasurer of Tydnish Bridge Fire Brigade. (Ali Holthoff/Facebook)
From that day on, Holthoff said he felt left in the dark. The results of Alison’s autopsy have not been released and he has heard nothing from anyone in government except the local MLA.
He said the health care system had failed his wife and he did not want her death to be in vain.
“We need change, the system is clearly broken. Or if it’s not damaged yet, it’s not too far off,” Holthoff said. “Something needs to be improved. I don’t want anyone else to go through this.”
“I want a place where if my kids break their legs, we can take them to a hospital if something happens.”
“The Most Amazing Man”
Alison Holthoff, 37, was a mother of three school-aged children. She was also Deputy Chief and Treasurer of the Tydnish Bridge Fire Department. Her obituary states that she won the volunteer of the year award for her work organizing community events such as a pancake breakfast and the annual children’s Christmas party.
“She was the most amazing person I’ve ever known,” Holthoff said. “She was great and anyone could use a hand from her. If they needed help with anything, she was there.”
A celebration of life was held at the local community center on Friday, and Holthoff said the turnout was overwhelming.
“I didn’t even know she had influenced so many people,” he said.
“I’ve never seen this center so crowded, I’ve never seen so many people there in the 10-plus years I’ve been here.”
The question on Holtoff’s mind now is whether his wife would still be alive if she had received prompt treatment on New Year’s Eve.
Holthoff said he doesn’t blame the hospital staff for what happened, but he does blame the system.
System problem
After the death of his wife, Holthoff turns to local MLA Elizabeth Smith-McCrossin for help.
On Jan. 6, Smith-McCrossin wrote an open letter to provincial Health Minister Michelle Thompson, demanding an “urgent investigation” into the situation. The letter said a request for a meeting earlier in the week had been denied.
“The government doesn’t seem to be paying any attention,” Holthoff said. “I don’t know what needs to happen, whether some of them need to be brought back to the ER before something happens, or how many more people need to die.” It’s just a shame.”
CBC News asked Nova Scotia Health how many deaths occurred in emergency rooms in 2022, but the department would not say.
Spokeswoman Christine Smith also would not comment on Alison Holthoff’s death, citing privacy rules.
“Any time there is a serious reported event involving someone who has had contact with the health care system within NSHA, a quality review is conducted,” Smith said in an emailed statement.
Smith-McCrossin said she was still pushing to meet the health minister.
“That’s why we want an inquest so the family can have those answers,” she said. “They haven’t heard anything from anybody in government and the challenge is that they’re not hearing anything, it’s getting more and more upsetting.”
“I hear from hundreds of people in the community asking, ‘Why is nothing being said?’ Why is nothing being done?’
Emergency conditions ‘not ideal’
Smith-McCrossin said health workers also contacted her about working conditions at the hospital.
“I hear regularly from people upset about long wait times and concerns about conditions in the emergency room,” she said.
“Our emergency department was flooded in May, so a temporary emergency department was set up in the outpatient department, which is a big challenge for our health workers to operate.”
Last week after a cabinet meeting, Thompson told reporters that the flooding caused Nova Scotia Health to move the emergency department “really quickly and unexpectedly.”
She acknowledged that the emergency department’s temporary setup presented challenges.
“We know these conditions are not ideal,” Thompson said. “They’re in a bit of a tough situation right now and we’re working with them knowing we’re going to make improvements there in the future.”
She said the redevelopment plan is in the design phase and she could not yet share a timeline for the project.
For his part, Holthoff said he had a clear message for the government.
“The health care system in Cumberland County, and probably the entire province, needs significant, serious improvement in every way.”
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