The family of 84-year-old Cleo Gratton says deplorable hospital conditions pushed him to apply for assisted suicide before his death from natural causes.
The family of Cleo Gratton, an 84-year-old retired diamond driller who died earlier this month in Chelmsford, Ontario, has spoken publicly about the disturbing treatment he experienced in the Canadian healthcare system, according to LIFE SITE NEWS.
Gratton, who suffered from heart disease and kidney failure, told relatives he would “rather die than go back to Health Sciences North in Sudbury.” His daughter, Lynn, said he spent one night in the emergency room before being moved to a hallway bed on the hospital’s seventh floor.
“There were no lights, all the bulbs in that hallway had been completely removed,” Lynn said. “Patients are passing by, nurses are going by, no privacy, no compassion, no dignity.” She described nurses using headlamps to examine his feet, adding that the experience “opened our eyes to what’s going on in our hospitals.”
Following the mid-October visit, Gratton applied for medical aid in dying (MAiD). Though he was approved, he died of natural causes surrounded by family before the procedure could take place.
Lynn stressed that the doctors and nurses were “amazing,” but overworked, asking, “Why are they still taking in patients if we have an overcrowding issue and they have no place to put these people?”
Gratton’s case mirrors several others in Canada where patients sought assisted suicide due to inadequate access to proper care, including cases involving Norman Meunier, “Mrs. B,” Sathya Dhara Khovac, and Sean Tagert.