Losing her first baby was devastating enough but having to do it in a crowded waiting room is what angered Christine Handrahan the most.
The 29-year-old Peakes woman was nine weeks pregnant when on July 12 she started bleeding.
Fearing the worst, Handrahan and her husband, Michael, headed to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital’s new emergency room.
There she waited more than three hours, blood seeping out of her jeans, tears rolling down her face as she feared she was losing her baby — or that she might be bleeding to death.
Still, she waited and waited.
More than three hours passed before Michael had enough.
“Somebody should have cared enough to say ‘Oh my goodness, you’re going through a miscarriage, do you need some quiet time?’ I was fighting my tears. I wanted a place to go cry,” - CHRISTINE HANDRAHAN
Only one patient had gone through the big glass doors to see a doctor so he knew the wait was going to be extensive.
Michael helped his wife out of a wheelchair into his truck and they made the 45-minute drive to Prince County Hospital in Summerside. There she was immediately rushed into the hospital’s emergency room where the mother-to-be was told that she had a miscarriage.
“What bothered me the most was the fact that I had to sit in public going through a miscarriage — in public,” Handrahan said.
Is that true what you say? That there are no private doctors or hospitals in Canada who are allowed to see patients. I find that difficult to believe.