As Dennis Daye lay unconscious in Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre Tuesday, his wife and physician sat in a hospital hearing room five floors above, locked in dispute over whether to keep him alive or let him die.
A massive stroke last month brought the 65-year-old retired truck driver to Sunnybrook, where doctors removed a large section of his skull due to swelling a trauma that stole much of his brain function and continues to place him in medical peril, Dr. Robert Fowler, one of Dayes physicians, testified before a three-member Consent and Capacity Board panel.
Dayes unknown wishes for life or death in these circumstances and the kind of medical care that is now in his best interests are now under dispute before the provincial board that mediates end-of-life conflicts between physicians and substitute decision-makers.
On the one side of that debate are Sunnybrook physicians, represented by Fowler, who wish to remove life-sustaining care and allow Daye to die peacefully.
On the other, Dayes wife and substitute decision-maker, Pilar, who wants her husband, a status Mohawk who attended Christian church services, to be treated with traditional, plant-based medicine.
Daye is the latest in a string of patients whose medical fortunes have become a matter of vigorous contention at Sunnybrook.
An ongoing Star investigation has reported four previous cases in which Sunnybrook physicians have come into legal conflict with families over medical care options.
We are the largest single-site resource for critical-care beds in the province, so that may have something to do with (the number of end-of-life disputes), but my sense is every hospital is dealing with these issues, said hospital spokesperson Craig DuHamel.
Just last month, Canadas Supreme Court reserved judgment on the case of Hassan Rasouli, a Sunnybrook patient whose family is seeking life-sustaining medical care despite a legal challenge from his physicians.
On Dec. 10, the same day the Supreme Court heard arguments in the Rasouli case, Daye suffered the stroke that would eventually bring him to Sunnybrook.
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Stroke victim’s wife fights doctors to keep him on life support