The Ottawa Hospital has permanently closed the temporary emergency overflow area at its General Campus, unofficially known as “the garage.”
But not before this holding pen became an indelible part of our nightmarish cancer story.
On April 30 of last year, when Anne and I celebrated our 46th anniversary of conjugal life by feasting on Ottawa’s finest Chinese food, Anne was herself: healthy, feisty, full of life.
The following week she was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a particularly aggressive, incurable, and lethal form of brain cancer.
Anne had emergency brain surgery on Monday, May 12. Her last words to me before entering the operating room were, “I love you all the time. And I’ll love you forever.”
The operation lasted about five hours and was deemed a “success” in so far as the surgical team managed to remove as much of the large malignant tumour as possible without causing her to become physically disabled or speech impaired, or to “lose” her personality, at least not right away.
She left the hospital lucid, gentle, and sometimes very funny.
The large, malignant growth in and swelling of her brain ironically resulted in her becoming less anxious and more mellow.
Immediately after the operation, when the highly skilled surgical team asked her where she was, Anne replied, “China.” (Those of you who knew Anne will recognize her fascination with Asia.)
We were even able to laugh about our nightmarish six-day pre-op stay in the hospital, which included Anne being parked for nearly four days and nights in a bizarre dome-like holding pen, which resembled a refugee camp in Bedlam.
Her inherent kindness, tolerance, and dignity, along with the location of the tumour, led Anne to handle the horrific diagnosis and prognosis, as well as the degrading and unhealthful conditions of her pre-op and post-op confinement with equanimity, grace, and good humour.
She would wolf the bland and mushy hospital food with gusto and good appetite that astonished and tickled staff and family members alike, and she never complained about the fellow patients interred in the ER overflow holding pen, even those who whinnied and bleated or snored like Vesuvius erupting throughout the entire night in adjacent cots separated from her miniscule cubicle by the thinnest of curtains.
You will find a picture of Anne about 12 hours after surgery was completed. She was preparing to single-mindedly devour some delicious hospital fare.
And she no longer believed that she was in China.
The Ottawa Hospital has permanently closed the temporary emergency overflow area (the aforementioned holding pen) at its General Campus, unofficially known as “the garage.”
While intended to ease overcrowding and ambulance wait times, the hospital shut it down after patients reported poor, “inhumane” conditions.
Here are the specific details regarding the changes and closures:
- The General Campus “Garage” Closure: Late this spring, the hospital permanently closed the 20-bed surge space (located in the old ambulance bay). While operating since 2023, the space officially closed and will not reopen because it “did not meet… expectations for patient experience”.
The facility was a two-story industrial-like space, with a big ventilation system blasting air and fluorescent lights lining the ceilings. The beds were divided by curtains, not walls.
Ontario’s healthcare system has become a grim exercise in waiting: patients stacked in emergency rooms because no beds are free; seniors stranded in hospitals because long-term care and home care cannot take them; and exhausted staff left to apologize for a system that keeps promising relief while delivering delay, indignity, and care that too often falls below what people deserve as a basic human right.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-hospital-shutters-garage-general-campus-9.7250932
Your friend,
Robert
https://robertmcbrydeauthor.com/
If you feel like reading more about Anne’s cancer journey, I’ve chronicled it in prose and poetry here:
https://robertmcbrydeauthor.com/news/
