A loving home, and now, a secure future for Megan
By: Victoria Times-Colonist (Victoria Times-Colonist)
Yvette Gallant knew she'd found the right place for her family when she saw the little sign outside the front door. "Welcome to Wit's End," it said.
The whimsical sign captures the reality of life in the Gallant household, jokes Yvette. Nothing is like it used to be now that teenage daughter Megan can no longer walk, talk, or look after herself. But that's not to say that the family has lost its sense of humour.
The facts are grim. Megan Gallant went to Victoria General Hospital in February 2001 for a relatively minor procedure: a laparascopy to determine the cause of abdominal pain she'd been having. Her mother went with her, and asked to sit with her 15-year-old daughter in the recovery room after her anesthetic.
But she wasn't allowed, and the unimaginable happened. Megan went into cardiac arrest in the recovery room - a risk as people emerge from anesthetic. Nursing staff didn't notice until her brain had been starved of oxygen for several minutes. The accident left Megan in a "permanent vegetative state," paralysed forever six months before her 16th birthday.
I first saw Megan when she was still in the hospital, several months after she'd been injured. With her eyes open but her body still, and no easy way to tell if she was registering anything at all, I could only take Yvette's word that her beloved oldest child was "still in there."
Megan's family never doubted that. Parents, aunts and uncles, Megan's brother Tony, cousins and siblings - everyone wanted Megan home where they could help her. They fought the health system, the government, and anyone else who got in the way of bringing Meagan home. They built a ramp, renovated rooms, and just generally chipped in.
And what do you know: It worked. I saw it for myself on a recent visit to the Gallant house: Megan, 600-watt smile lighting up the living room, looking completely happy to be sitting in her wheelchair watching Dennis the Menace.
Ultimately, that's what settled the lawsuit, say Yvette's lawyers. After a video Yvette made of Megan's progress was shown at the settlement hearing last month, nobody could argue that the young girl wasn't improving. The case was settled10 days before trial.
The health system wanted Megan in an institution, says Yvette. The family couldn't imagine such a thing. The $2.9-million out-of-court settlement with the Vancouver Island Health Authority settles that issue once and for all: The Gallants can now afford to keep Megan at home.
Yvette says she'll have to be careful to make the money last, especially if Megan lives "a long, long time" as her mother anticipates. But the settlement at least provides paid home care for the next 30 years for Megan, and keeps her with her family.
Given Canada's challenging malpractice laws, that's about as good as it gets, says Yvette's lawyer Michael Velletta. "A medical negligence case is always hard-fought and difficult," he says. We anticipated great difficulty from the beginning."
Yvette is still wearing the scars. The VIHA lawyers first tried to argue that Megan was too much a vegetable to recognize improvements in her life, so $20,000 should be plenty for pain and suffering (she ended up with $295,000, the maximum in Canada).
Then there was a rather ugly discussion around whether Megan would have made it through high school if she hadn't been injured, the argument advanced by VIHA when lawyers were calculating future wage loss for the teen. Fortunately, the Gallants won that round as well, with Megan deemed bright enough to have attended college for two years had the oxygen to her brain not been cut off that fateful day.
Canadian hospitals are required by law to investigate their injuries and deaths, says Velletta. But they're not required to tell anyone what they have learnt. They're shielded by the Canada Evidence Act.
So all the details of what happened in the recovery room that day may never come out.
VIHA officials said Thursday that all findings in such cases are kept confidential, but that any recommendations are acted on immediately. "Obviously, this was a tragic, tragic incident for the family," said Suzanne Germain.
What's certain, however, is that mistakes were made, including the turning off of vital alarms and a lack of a "stir up regime," the series of taps on the face, name-calling and shaking that goes on to rouse people from anesthetic. Had alarms on various monitors been switched on as requires, they would have signalled Megan's distress sooner to the two recovery-room nurses.
The tragedy of the whole thing troubled the Gallant family for a long time. But there are other things to worry about now - like how to heft Megan up onto her physio equipment every day, or how to knead her more often so her uncontrollable tendons don't twist and contort on themselves.
No institution would be up to the challenge, declares Yvette. Which is what makes Wit's End such a perfect fit: The money problems are over, but life in the Gallant house is always going to be just this side of crazy. And the dazzling dark-haired teen who checked into the hospital that February day probably isn't coming back, no matter how many years go by.
Yvette used to wonder if the hospital would call at some point to say how sorry they were for how things have turned out. She's still waiting.
