Hamilton woman spent 3 days inside Juravinski hospital storage closet

A Hamilton woman says she had a terrible stay at Juravinski hospital. Kathy Cooper says she was kept in degrading conditions for three days.

Cooper says the staff at Juravinski were fine, but she says people in Ontario deserve better treatment than she received. She says no one should go through what she went through, “This is disgusting. This is terrible, like I said I felt like cattle.”

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Cooper says she was put in a bed in a storage closet at Juravinski hospital for three days after chemotherapy treatments for cancer. Cooper was supposed to leave the hospital following a treatment, but her temperature went up so she had to stay, but her hospital room was needed by somebody else.

Cooper says, “…took me out of the bed and then said they were putting me in the hall. But the hall wasn’t the hall, it was a closet, a stock room. It was very dingy.”

Her pictures show a posting on the wall saying “Please do not leave the stock room untidy.” She had a portable toilet beside her bed. Instead of a modern call bell to the nurse she used an old-fashioned steel desk bell. Cooper says hallway medicine would have been better.

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Hamilton MPP Monique Taylor brought up Kathy’s ordeal in the legislature last week, “…we’re in 2023 and the crisis in our hospitals has gone from bad to worse.”

Health minister Sylvia Jones responded by saying the province is building new hospitals, “I hope the member opposite shared with Kathy the 50-plus investments that we are making through the infrastructure Ontario ministry to either build, expand or renovate 50 different hospital builds.”

That response is of no comfort to Cooper, “Yes, that’s coming but what about what’s happening right now to myself or anybody else that has to go into that room? Let’s fix this first then go to that.”

Cooper wants others to know what’s happening and says the government should not let people be treated that way, “the room… that was degrading.” She says when she left the closet there may have been someone else getting a bed in there. As far as she knows the closet may still be used as a patient room.

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CHCH News called Hamilton Health Sciences about this on Monday but has yet to hear back. The provincial government gave CHCH News a statement on Monday saying the status quo isn’t working and more needs to be done. They also appeared to be trying to raise doubts about whether Cooper’s story actually happened. They say they “strongly encourage” MPPS like Monique Taylor to “verify stories of a patient’s experience” before making them public. Cooper told us this afternoon the province hasn’t called her to find out what happened or verify anything.